


Granting a Favour

by thegables



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Bottom Mycroft Holmes, Coming Out, Falling In Love, From Sex to Love, Getting Together, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mycroft Being Mycroft, Slow Burn, Slowly realizing the police isn't great, Top Greg Lestrade, Transphobia, allyship, glasgow is a top holiday destination now apparently?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-28
Updated: 2020-12-06
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:22:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 39,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27763681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegables/pseuds/thegables
Summary: "Greg knew that he was being punished for his moment of hesitation, for his refusal to fall in line the moment Mycroft flinched. This made him angry, but there was something more galvanizing there too. A punishment felt like a gauntlet, an acknowledgement. Mycroft had said he didn’t want the debt of a favour from Greg, but he still overreacted when the opportunity was denied."Greg and Mycroft discover that intimacy is the most frightening experiment of all.
Relationships: Mycroft Holmes/Greg Lestrade
Comments: 93
Kudos: 246





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This work is already completed, and one chapter will be posted every day until it's all published! 
> 
> Stay tuned for: gay longing, kinky sex, being gay in a greenhouse, lots of texting, and more! Feedback is much appreciated. Thanks for reading. 
> 
> CW for mentions of transphobia and racism in this chapter.

As soon as the call was transferred, its receiver picked it up promptly. “I only have a moment, Detective Inspector.”

“That’s fine. I’m well, Mycroft, thanks, how are you?”

There was a slight pause on the line. “Is this how you wish to use your moment?”

Greg huffed a laugh. He should have known that to interface with Mycroft Holmes—on purpose—would involve more precise strategizing than he’d expected. “No, no, I’m getting to it. I hope it’s alright that I called. I wouldn’t if it weren’t important. I need—well somebody else needs your help with something. It’s a worthy cause.”

“Not Sherlock related?” He sounded surprised.

“No, actually. I hope it’s alright that I’m using your contact like this. But as I say, it’s a good cause.”

“Go ahead, Detective Inspector.” Greg could imagine him on the other side of the line, in his leather and mahogany office, head tipped slightly back, regal and skeptical, as he listened.

“Ah—alright. I’ve got this constable, you see, young thing, just starting, and she’s in a bit of trouble. Got a disciplinary charge against her, and she’ll probably lose her job. She went off on a suspect, screaming and shouting, almost got physical. The thing is—he was harassing her, in the most hateful way. She could barely bear to repeat it to me.”

“I see.”

“Well, it’s not what you’re thinking. She’s, er, trans, I think is the word, and she’s black, and he was saying the most vile shite, racist shit, stuff about her being a man in a wig… You should have seen her face. It was awful.”

Mycroft didn’t immediately reply. Then he said, “I understand your meaning, Detective Inspector.” His voice was soft and grave, with none of its usual sardonic edge.

“So I can’t blame her for what she did, I really can’t, but the boss above me doesn’t want to record it as a hate crime, there’s a problem with prosecution, and a lot of red tape… The gist is she’s going to lose her job, and I can’t do a thing about it myself. It’s coming from above my position.”

“Ah.” There was a small sound of a clicking pen.

Greg’s heart twisted. It probably wasn’t fair to ask this of Mycroft, but what had happened to Jessica was ten times less fair.

“You’d like me to intervene on her behalf.”

“Probably you couldn’t do anything, anyway,” Greg started miserably, “but I just would feel like hell if I didn’t ask.” He realized he didn’t know if Mycroft was even supportive of LGBT people, although he always suspected Mycroft to be gay himself. But that didn’t mean anything, necessarily.

Mycroft thought for a long moment. “What is her name, your constable?”

“Jessica Hartman.”

“Alright. Why don’t you and Constable Hartman come to my office in Whitehall for a brief meeting, perhaps tomorrow, and I’ll see what I can do. I’d like to talk to her first. I do things thoroughly, or not at all, you see.”

“Of course. I—thank you, Mycroft, really, thank you. It’s your good deed for the year.”

His voice was curious and wry when he replied, “Yes, I suppose it is. My PA will contact you about the scheduling. Goodbye, Detective.” He rang off abruptly.

~~~

Jessica was cautiously optimistic when Greg explained his plan. “I really don’t want to be any bother,” she said, looking at the floor. “And I _really_ don’t want to keep talking about it.”

Greg’s heart sank. He hadn’t properly considered what it would cost her to describe the incident again. “I understand, or at least I can try to. I promise not to let him ask any invasive questions, I’m serious. But if you don’t want to go—it’s your choice. You’re in charge.”

She considered this gauntlet for a long time, worrying her lip. “I hate backing down,” she admitted, with a bit of a smile. “And I need this job. If you swear this guy won’t interrogate _me_ , I’ll do it.”

Greg couldn’t help the wideness of his grin. “Good,” he said. “Mycroft can fix it, I’m pretty sure. And he’ll keep it quiet. You should never have to worry about this again.”

Jessica shook her head, as if it wasn’t that simple, but she merely said, “Thank you, DI Lestrade.” They would go to Whitehall after lunch.

~~~

Mycroft’s PA gave them tea in the anteroom of his office, as if dispensing with all possible niceties before they could soak up any more of Mycroft’s precious time. It was good tea, but then Greg had to navigate holding the teacup as well as his briefcase and car keys, which he hadn’t put away, all while ushering Jessica ahead of him. He wondered if Mycroft was going to shake his hand. They’d never met like this, not in his office, and not about anything besides Sherlock and open cases. And yet they’d known each other for several years, in all sorts of weather and moods. But Mycroft liked to hover on the edges of things; he did not charge in, like his brother did. He stood and watched, or he orchestrated from the shadows. Perhaps the impressive thing about this meeting, Greg reflected as he sloshed his tea, was not that Mycroft had agreed to do something nice, but rather that he’d agreed to _get involved_ in something of which he was not already in charge.

But—wow—the surprising thing about the meeting turned out to be that Mycroft had grown a beard. It was, he supposed, the more or less natural thing to happen when most men stopped shaving, but it had never quite occurred to Greg that the thing was possible in this case. Mycroft’s beard was full, not patchy or thin, but neatly trimmed, and dark red. It—Greg searched for a more precise word—it suited him.

Other than the beard, Mycroft was just as usual: tall, intimidatingly serious, in three piece suit with impossibly neat cuffs. “Detective Inspector Lestrade,” he said, “and Constable Hartman. Sit, please.”

“Sorry about the tea, I’ll just—” Mycroft’s PA emerged silently to save Greg from the prison of his tea cup. “Thanks. Anyway, thank you for seeing us. Hartman, this is Mycroft Holmes. He’s—Sherlock’s brother,” he finished lamely.

Jessica’s eyebrows raised, in a gesture of expressive understatement.

Mycroft smiled insincerely. “I hold a minor position in the British government,” he said. “I’d like to see what I can do to help your situation.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“It is the least I can do.” He seated himself behind his desk and replaced a pen that had been in use when they’d arrived back in its case. “Alright, then. Why don’t you tell me what happened, in your own words. I’ll give you two pieces of advice. Don’t edit it to avoid offending my sensibilities. I can assure you I’ve heard far worse. Tell me in plain words.”

“What’s the second piece of advice?” Jessica asked.

Mycroft placed all ten fingertips on the shiny surface of his desk, making a cage of each hand. “Do not lie to me,” he said precisely. “It won’t help. Understood?”

Jessica nodded.

“Don’t be an ass, Mycroft, she’s been through enough as it is.”

Mycroft arched an aloof eyebrow. “And I’m here to help, Detective Inspector. Is asking for honesty what you call ass behaviour? I’ll have to update my definition.”

Jessica twisted her hands. “Look, I have no intentions of lying to you, that would be incredibly stupid, and I’m sure you have better things to do than deal with this, so can we just—?”

Greg swallowed hard, glancing furtively between them. To his surprise, Mycroft sat back in his chair and gave a small, genuine smile. It was perhaps the most genuine expression Greg had ever seen him make. “Indeed,” was all he said.

Jessica fixed her eyes on a point over Mycroft’s left shoulder, twisting a ring around her finger as she spoke. It was a pose Greg knew well to associate with trauma. Not for the first time did he wonder if he was making the right choice. “So it starts, right, with this guy getting brought down. My sergeant pinned him, and I had the cuffs, and when he saw me…” She swallowed. “Looked me up and down, like he couldn’t believe it. Looked at my—braids, my hair, and my—. And my hands.”

The heat of secondhand pain coursed through Greg. He knew he had no right to air it.

Mycroft assessed her face and then, quite suddenly, put up a hand. His expression was pinched and far away. “I understand, Constable Hartman. I do not wish you to be forced to recount the abuse you experienced. I assume there are witnesses I could call upon, if I needed them? Who would speak on the condition of anonymity?”

Jessica, nearly tearful, nodded.

Greg was examining Mycroft’s face. This was a side of him he’d never seen. He’d become human, become merciful, without losing an ounce of his formality.

“I understand this is difficult. Please move ahead to your response to the suspect.”

Jessica shifted in her chair. “I was angry, I said some things I probably shouldn’t, I—called him a git, and a—motherfucker, probably more than once. Among some other choice words.”

Mycroft minutely adjusted his cufflink. “Allow me a slightly indelicate question. What was the race of this man?”

“White,” Jessica said flatly. “Forgive me, but what do you think?”

Mycroft huffed a polite laugh. “We are not surprised, are we Detective Inspector?”

“Guess not,” Greg said, grinning.

“Here are two of the most important questions, Miss Hartman, excuse me, Constable Hartman. Did this man put his hands on you in any way?”

Jessica’s expression darkened. “Yes,” she said, her voice a rough whisper. “On my hair—he grabbed my arm—he shoved me in the chest.”

Mycroft nodded. “I understand. And did you put your hands on him?”

Her chin lifted, proud and defensive, and Greg felt a little swell of pride. “I put the handcuffs on him, if that’s what you mean. I threw an elbow when he grabbed at me. And I—I pulled my arm back to hit him. But another constable pulled me off. I don’t know if that answers your question.”

Mycroft’s gaze was lowered, focused on his desk. “It does,” he said. It occurred to Greg that Mycroft wasn’t taking notes, and his PA had left the room. Was this meeting being recorded? Surely it was illegal without their permission. “Is there any other information you think I should have, before I make a few telephone calls? Knowing that the Detective Inspector will fill me in on the relevant administrative details?”

Jessica shook her head.

“Very well.” Mycroft stood with officious flair. Then he frowned intently, furrowing his brows, and brought one slender hand up to stroke his beard on both sides of his mouth. He seemed deep in thought. Finally he said, “I’m very sorry that this happened to you, Constable. I am going to do everything I can. What you can do for me is never to tell anyone that this meeting took place.”

Jessica stood up too. “Thank you very much, Mr. Holmes. I promise I won’t. I know it’s—inevitable, probably. But I need this job. I was just doing my job.”

Mycroft nodded, slow and thoughtful. “I suppose you were,” he said softly. “Would you wait outside for a moment? I will close up the final details with Detective Inspector Lestrade.”

When they were alone, Greg rose and approached the desk, feeling like he didn’t know anything about Mycroft Holmes at all. He had had been both far more generous and far more clinical than Greg would have thought possible. He did it without interrogating Jessica or subjecting her to any of the cruel scrutiny that an official investigation would have done. He realized that he had done the precisely right thing by calling Mycroft. No more or less than the right thing.

“Look,” he said, his heart in his throat, “I can’t thank you enough for this. I feel terrible for what she’s been through, not just this one thing, but you know, it makes you think about this whole bloody thing, the police, ‘law and order,’ it’s so messed up, and I just thought—if I can help her. But. Well. You did.”

Mycroft covered his mouth and chin with his hand and stroked. “You understand—” he began after a moment. “I’ll see what I can do. I’m hopeful, but I’m not willing to make promises. But the Commissioner and I—.”

“Golf together?” Greg grinned.

Mycroft arched an eyebrow. “Something like that.”

“Well, I appreciate it, Mycroft, I really do. This is a really good deed. And, obviously, I owe you a favour. Don’t know if you need one from the likes of me. But if there’s something I can do, down at the Yard, or with Sherlock, let me know, I’d be more than happy.”

Mycroft turned abruptly and looked out of the east window out of his office. Greg regretted the lost insight of seeing his face. His hair at the nape of his neck was a sharp, curved line, like he saw his barber every day. Maybe he did. After a moment, he spoke. “There is something you can do for me, Lestrade.” His voice was low and dangerous. Greg thought of Sherlock saying with derision, _he’s the most dangerous man in England_.

“Sure,” he said, “What’s that?”

Mycroft turned back neatly and looked Greg hard in the eyes. “Do not ask me for a favour again.” The words fell like a stone, solid, almost physical mass. “Am I understood?”

Greg forgot a moment that he wasn’t a frightened constable, that he wasn’t 25, that he hadn’t misbehaved. He felt pinned. Then, gathering his wits, he got angry. “Yeah, fine, whatever,” he said, weary and pissed off. “I’ve cashed it in. I won’t bother you again.” He left without saying goodbye.


	2. Chapter Two

The next day he received a mysterious telephone call from Mycroft’s PA, who said with little preamble, “Does your constable have satisfactory administrative skills?”

“My constable?”

“Jessica Hartman. Is she proficient with computer skills and phones?”

“Er—oh, yeah. All the officers are, there are office duties as well as hands-on work. Why?”

“That’s the only information I need for now, Detective Inspector, thank you.”

He could guess what she was on about, but he was too angry to consider it further.

~~~

Where did he get off? Who did he think he was? What was his problem? These and other inane questions circled in Greg’s mind over the following week as he remembered the ending of his interview with Mycroft. It wasn’t so much the rebuff that irked him as what had come before it: Mycroft’s generosity and sensitivity to the issue at hand, his graciousness to Greg and Jessica, and his low, velvet voice, as he said, in Mycroft-speak, _get the fuck out._ Don’t call us, we’ll call you. Yeah, I had a nice time, but I’m not over my ex.

That probably wasn’t the best metaphor, actually.

For whatever reason, Greg couldn’t let it go. He was on the verge of mentioning it to Sherlock when he next saw the man himself. Greg had been with Sherlock and John on a case all day, which had concluded as these days so often did: with Sherlock committing an unmistakable crime in pursuit of the truth.

By the time Greg rounded the corner with Donovan, Sherlock was sat on the ground in zip ties, John standing by and laughing more or less hysterically. “John!” Sherlock groaned. “You are not being helpful.”

The arresting officer was from another taskforce, Organized Crime, and didn’t know Sherlock from Adam. He did know Lestrade, however.

“I never said I’d be helpful, I said I would _come along_ ,” John said, wiping his eyes. “Oh, you’ll be fine, I’m sure Mycroft will be along any minute now to bail you out.”

“That’s exactly what I’m trying to avoid,” Sherlock spat. “Lestrade, kindly tell this brute that you know me and I have special clearance to—.”

He stopped speaking as the inevitable black Audi slid up to the pavement. _How does he do that so fast?_ Sherlock had been in custody for all of 10 minutes. Greg didn’t know whether to feel defiant or embarrassed, standing here in a bulletproof vest and combat boots with the fate of Sherlock’s—well the fate of Sherlock’s next 12 hours—in his hands. He turned back to the subdued detective, away from the car. _More than one kind of power._ “I don’t know, Sherlock,” he said, his voice rough. He heard the scuff and drag of his own accent surface. “You run afoul of Organized Crime, maybe I let them deal with you.”

“Le _strade_ ,” Sherlock pleaded, clearly weighing his authority against the British Government arriving behind them.

Finally, unwillingly, Lestrade turned. Mycroft’s beard made him look less haggard and sallow under the street lights than he had used to at these sort of scenes. He was holding his ever-present umbrella in one hand, leaning on it with a flourish as he walked. His suit was almost blue and almost grey. He was, inexplicably, wearing a bowtie. He looked like the don of an Oxford college and an investment banker at the same time. Greg hated him.

“Oh, do your worst,” Sherlock grumbled, giving up.

“Doctor Watson,” Mycroft greeted, languorous and at ease. He was in absolutely no hurry at all. “Detective Inspector Lestrade. Sherlock. Oh, and I’m sorry, I don’t know this arresting officer.”

“Who’s this?” The Organized Crime man asked.

“Don’t ask,” John said, flashing a cheeky look back at Mycroft.

“He’s just my _brother_ ,” Sherlock said, exasperation so well-practiced that it was rote by now. “Alright, Mycroft, you can lecture as much as you want, can you make yourself useful for once in your desk jockey life and get this plastic menace off my wrists?”

“Lestrade,” Mycroft said, and stopped speaking. His name was a warning, a request, and an invitation.

Greg pivoted back to Mycroft and realised he still had a tactical helmet on his head. It was making him sweat. He pulled it off before he spoke, scratching his sweaty hair into peaks. “Yes, Mycroft?”

“The simplest way forward, it seems to me,” Mycroft began, supercilious and frowning as always, “would be for you to share with this unknown officer the nature of Sherlock’s relationship with you and the Homicide and Serious Crime Command, so that he can be let go.”

Sherlock snorted.

“Don’t get caught resisting arrest, that’s my advice,” John said, watching the scene as if with popcorn.

“I mean, to be clear, we’re outside my total jurisdiction now,” Greg said, straightening, hands on his hips. “This is a coalition with Organized Crime, and if they’ve made an arrest, I probably ought to fall in line with that.”

Mycroft cast his eyes skyward, casting the pale, vulnerable skin of his throat in low lavender light from the flashing lights and street lamps. “I am not asking you for a favour. This is not a favour I need to request from you. I can have this resolved in two telephone calls. It will take a matter of fifteen minutes. I thought it might suit you to go home fifteen minutes earlier. To your—” he cast an appraising eye over Greg’s form.

“To my what?”

“Never mind.” _Yeah, sure_ , Greg thought, _deduce that I’m divorced and lonely and subsisting on freezer meals. I love that. I love being emotionally X-rayed._

The Organized Crime bloke, not the sharpest, said, “Lestrade? Do you know this man?”

Greg pushed a hand up over his hair and down the back of his neck. When he did so, his arm shook a little. He was so tired. “Yeah, I know him. Cut him loose, Barrett.”

“Please wait one moment,” Mycroft said politely. “What did Sherlock do, out of curiosity?”

Barrett grunted. “Breaking and entering, tampering with an investigation, oh, and, defacing evidence.”

Mycroft raised one brow. “Defacing how?”

Lestrade cringed. “He spat on an envelope looking for invisible ink. Wasn’t any.”

Mycroft abruptly turned his face away, looking back toward his car. Greg got the distinct sense that he was trying to conceal a smile. When he turned back, it wasn’t entirely gone. “Invisible ink, Sherlock? Shoddy work.” He looked at Greg, puckish and remote. “Take him to booking. I will retrieve him there.”

John and Sherlock both let out shouts of dismay. They were very used to Mycroft bailing them out, no matter how they bemoaned his presence.

“You don’t have to do this,” Greg said to him. 

Mycroft shrugged. “It’s done,” he said, as if once done, all his actions were indelible. “I’ll meet you at booking, Detective Inspector, won’t I?” He turned on the pivot point of his umbrella and returned to his waiting car.

Greg knew that he was being punished for his moment of hesitation, for his refusal to fall in line the moment Mycroft flinched. This made him angry, it doesn’t bear pointing out, but there was something more galvanizing there too. A punishment felt like a gauntlet, an acknowledgement. Mycroft had said he didn’t want the debt of a favour from Greg, but he still overreacted when the opportunity was denied.

Greg was still thinking about this as he waited in central booking for Sherlock to be released. All of this was a pointless formality; Sherlock had certainly been here before. Each time Mycroft bailed him out and had the arrest expunged from his record. It was like writing down a letter only to erase it word by word. Actually, a lot of Greg’s life at the Metropolitan Police felt that way lately.

Mycroft came into the waiting room shortly after Greg did. He was alone, without his PA, just the umbrella, and under the harsh lights of the room he looked both more tired and younger. “Ah,” he said upon seeing Greg, uncomfortable.

“We should be done here soon,” Greg said. “Since I know you were very concerned for the fate of my evening.”

Mycroft frowned, not immediately acknowledging. Finally he said, “You offered to owe me a favour. I suggested that I don’t believe in such straightforward systems of retribution. They so often lead to more debt. Then again… I suppose I have punished Sherlock for a poor deduction. That would seem to debunk my own philosophy.”

Greg was too tired for this kind of talk; he’d have rather left the analogies back in A levels. “Look, Mycroft, it’s fine. You don’t want to be in my debt, that’s fine.” Then he grinned. “But I _could have_ done you a favour tonight. I’ll enjoy remembering that.”

Mycroft made a low noise of irritation in his throat. “That’s not accurate in the least. I _do not need_ your clearance in order to exonerate Sherlock. I work in close relations with your boss’s boss’s boss’s boss. It is utterly immaterial—.” He seemed to suddenly realise he’d lost control. He stopped and cleared his throat.

 _You need me to give him cases, though_ , Greg couldn’t help thinking. _You need me_. It felt good. He let a long silence pass, the atmosphere between them gradually cooling. Mycroft busied himself with his phone, angling the screen away from Greg. Finally Greg hazarded a long look over at him. Mycroft was folded uncomfortably in the grotty holding room chair, one long leg thrown over the other, intricately stitched dress brogues on the sticky linoleum. He remembered Mycroft putting up his hand to stop Jessica from describing what the suspect had said to her. Saying, with straightforward sincerity, _I’m sorry this happened to you_.

Without any further preparation he was saying, “Who do you know that’s trans?”

Mycroft did not immediately look up from his phone. The only indication that he’d heard Greg at all was a slight stiffening in his shoulders. Then he said, “Do you expect me to give personal evidence for all the decisions I make, Lestrade? Right here in this wretched place?”

Greg shrugged. “No. I just asked. Sometimes you ask even if you think the answer might be no. Or _sod off_.”

Mycroft smiled primly. “How long have we to wait?”

“Half an hour,” Greg lied. He had no idea how long they’d keep Sherlock.

“Mm.” Mycroft uncrossed his legs. He gave an appraising look at Greg, and at the room, and some little resistance in his face, some protective wariness, seemed to fall. “Forgive me,” he said, “would you care for a cigarette?”

It was a cool, temperate night, and very still. Mycroft’s cigarettes were boutique. His lighter was broken, and they used Greg’s. The taste of the smoke, expensive and poisonous and bracing, seemed to literalize all the other sensations Greg had experienced all night long. He didn’t press Mycroft. He was floating through his fatigue, sanguine and peaceful on this awful grimy street corner.

Mycroft almost finished his first cigarette before he began speaking. “You asked me who I know who is trans. It was a good deduction, in this case. The answer is my best friend from school.” He paused to take a drag. “We were at Balliol together. For three years, more or less, he did not take a deep breath. He passed out at a halls dinner from binding his chest too tightly. With Ace bandages.” He took another drag and turned away to blow smoke into the empty street. “ _That_ , in any case, was my first cover-up.” His smile was thin. “Ultimately he permanently changed the shape of his ribcage from binding it so tight.”

Greg’s guts felt cold. “I can’t imagine,” he said. “That sounds—that’s awful. I’m sorry.”

Mycroft nodded. “He is very happy now, I know. I was a child, when we were at school. I had no real way to help him. But your constable—.” He shook his head and closed his eyes. He looked as if he were in pain. “ _Every force_ is against her.”

“Yes.”

“It is not going to become any easier for her to be a police officer. No matter the strings I’ve pulled.”

“I know.” Greg had been thinking about this a lot too. Every time he thought about the hostility of his workplace, let alone the wider public, to Jessica’s life, he thought again about her admitting, _I need this job._

Mycroft stepped on his cigarette butt and immediately lit another. “I know our—methods don’t align, Lestrade. But I hope you can perceive that I help in the ways that I know how. I—wouldn’t want you to get the wrong impression.”

Something tugged in Greg’s throat. “Your friend. You paid for his transition, didn’t you?”

An unreadable expression came to Mycroft’s face. He turned his face to the street to hide it. “You’re making unsubstantiated guesses again. Yes, I did. It was not much. It was only the right thing.”

 _I don’t know this person at all._ The thought rang like a bell. Greg tried to focus on the taste of the smoke. _Who is this impossible unknowable person? And why_ the hell _is he always carrying that umbrella?_ He decided to hazard an extremely risky question. “But you and he never—I mean—”

Mycroft frowned fiercely. This had been a misstep; Greg flushed. But then Mycroft said in an ordinary voice, “No, not at all. He was—interested in women. I was not interested in—.” He didn’t finish, just when he was getting to the interesting bit. “No. Always friends. He lives in Glasgow now. He’s a Classics Professor.”

“I can’t believe you’re telling me all this,” Greg said, too tired to be cagey.

Mycroft bit the inside of his cheek. “Neither can I,” he said, but then he turned away again to stamp out the cigarette, smoked down to the filter.

Greg stopped him before he could go back inside—not with a touch, but a hand hovering near his arm. “Aren’t you going to ask me why I helped Jessica? Now that I know why you did.”

Mycroft scowled, unfriendly again. “You do not know why I did,” he said flatly. “And no, thank you, I won’t ask. It’s none of my business. And in any case, I already know.”

He slipped back into booking, leaving Greg confused and frustrated on the pavement.

~~~

A few days later, Greg learned that Jessica’s disciplinary record had been wiped clean, all allegations dropped. Later the same day, she told him she’d been offered a job, making phone calls and compiling research, in the front office of the Labour MP for Hampstead and Kilburn. The job came with benefits and paid holidays and the opportunity for advancement. Jessica told him, almost apologetically, that she planned to take it, and Greg said, shaking her hand too hard, “I’ll throw the going away party.”

He did not call Mycroft to thank him. He slept through the night for the first time in weeks.

~~~

The next time Sherlock made a mess of things—only a few weeks later—Greg found himself unable to focus at the scene. He flitted between SOCO and John and Sally, all holding down various corners of the investigation, all the time anticipating the arrival of a black car and the inevitable frustration that would follow. For the first time he was wondering whether Mycroft Holmes was an essentially benevolent force in the world, a net good, and how that possibility affected the fact that he was, in effect, a snobbish and superior prick. Which personality would he receive tonight?

Finally the Audi arrived, sleek and foreboding, and Greg ignored it, feeling an approach on the back of his neck, and finally he turned and there was Mycroft’s PA, standing alone. Standing there alone in a tight pencil skirt and blouse and heels, lips full and pink, lashes dark, her gaze knowing and wry.

It was just disappointing, alright? It was just a letdown, when you’d been expecting a fight, to be presented with the budget replacement instead.

Anthea didn’t speak to Greg; she assessed the scene, spoke briefly to Sherlock, and then made a phone call, whether to Mycroft or not was unclear.

“You got off lucky tonight,” Greg said to Sherlock as they parted after midnight. “You didn’t have to deal with him.”

“With who?” Sherlock asked, puzzled, because all the room in his head was for scuffs on boots and criminal masterminds and conspiracies and the melting temperature of lead and John Watson. He hadn’t been thinking about Mycroft at all.

~~~

Divorce was terrible, well, always, but it was especially terrible until Shannon turned 18 and went to UCL. Now Greg didn’t have to coordinate much at all with Leanna, other than holidays. He had lunch with Shannon every Friday at a sandwich shop halfway between her last class and New Scotland Yard. Today, as it poured rain outside and he ordered a roast beef sandwich, he regarded his daughter. She wore a bandana over her hair and glitter on her face and a ripped T-shirt, and he wasn’t sure which political allegiance or subculture this was supposed to represent. He spent his time at these lunches groping for conversation topics, hoping she was having fun, and feeling overwhelming, earth-shattering love for this wild adult person he had helped to make. “Hey,” he said as she sipped her tea, “You have pretty definite ideas about ethics, right? 18 year old uni students have very definite ideas about ethics.”

She rolled her eyes. “That’s so funny! You’re so funny, dad.”

“No, I’m serious! Aren’t you learning about, you know, what Nietzsche would do about the trolley problem? You know more about that stuff than I do.”

Shannon raised her eyebrows. “Do you need some help with a Nietzsche problem?”

Greg found himself actually squirming. “No, I—it’s more complicated than that. I just mean. Hmm. I know you’ve had some friends who have had reservations about the police, and how they—we—treat people, or the history of the police, and I… wanted to hear more abut that. From your perspective.”

Shannon huffed. “You want to talk about ACAB, dad?”

He laughed out loud. She had a way of cutting right to the core of a subject or a problem. “Yes, I guess I do. Or whatever your point of view is.”

She looked impressed. “That’s very openminded of you, I have to say.”

“That’s your old dad, openminded as hell.”

She thought for a long moment as her sandwich was put down in front of her. _She looks like me_ , Greg thought with a pang. _Who is this stranger?_ “I mean, yeah, I definitely hear people talking about how the police are racist and how they hurt people. I know you guys don’t use guns as much as in the States, but still. Tasing unarmed people, you know.” She shrugged with eighteen year old imprecision. “And that policing doesn’t actually make crime go down—I can’t remember, exactly. I never know what to say in these conversations.”

“Why not?”

She blinked up at him. “Because I’m thinking about you.”

Only the bolt of surprise saved Greg from becoming very emotional about this. “Oh,” he said.

“Of course, you dolt.” She smiled. “Like, I think a lot of stuff about the police probably is bollocks. But I know you’ve caught serial killers, rapists, all these legitimately dangerous people. Who aren’t on the street anymore. That’s not nothing, right?”

Images of the serial killers Greg had jailed flashed in his mind, as did his regret that his daughter knew about it with any degree of detail. He also thought about the people he’d jailed who were poor, or angry, or addicted to something. How do you separate evil from disaster? What if they aren’t always the same?

“That’s not nothing,” he agreed. “But I’m still—part of that system. That, you’re right, has done a lot of bad things. They still happen.”

She tilted her head, studying him. She looked both 12 and 25. Greg grieved every day of her teens he’d missed, when she was with Leanna, but at the same time he was glad those days were over. Finally she said, “You going to quit your job, dad?”

“No,” he said, but too slowly to reassure her. “I’m just—thinking through some things.”

She frowned. “You always say it’s not my job to ask you this, but like… are you okay? Are you depressed?”

Then he did feel emotional. He turned his face to the window, streaked with rain. He couldn’t say the true thing, couldn’t put the pressure on her of saying, _you asking me that question is the thing that makes me okay_. “Hey, kid, yes, of course, I’m okay. I’m better than okay. Just working a lot. But I’m fine. It’s really good to see you.”

“You too. I just—you’ve always been a cop, right? You never thought about quitting. Why are you asking questions like this?”

He smiled. It was new, this shift in their dynamic. He’d never felt the scrutiny or concern of his daughter’s attention like this before. It was unsettling, but nice, too. This whole grown person, concerned with things and people beyond herself. “Oh, I don’t know, I—helped someone, a little ways back, and it got me thinking about whether I made the right choice. Whether I did it the right way. Then I realised, it wasn’t so much about whether I did it right. Just a whole system that rose up before me—that I couldn’t put right. So.”

Shannon put her pickle spear on Greg’s plate. “What did you do, in the end?”

Greg twisted his mouth so he wouldn’t smile. “I asked somebody wiser and more powerful than me.”

“And what did they say?”

If Greg leaned his shoulder against the window, he could see the London Eye, slowly revolving, unconcerned, in the rain. The window was cold and hard against his jacket. “They said,” he repeated, remembering Mycroft’s expression, “‘I’ll take care of it.’”


	3. Chapter Three

The next time they met, Greg was called in after everything was over, as the cavalry. John’s voice on the phone, saying, “Get to Bethnal Green, _now_.” He texted an address and Greg turned the sirens on.

Another squad car beat him there and when he arrived things were already finishing up. The forger in custody, the cut over Sherlock’s eye patched with surgical glue from a first aid kit, evidence being collected. The only unfinished business was the wailing ambulance, sitting still and waiting for its occupant.

Mycroft was saying to the EMTs, “My driver will take me to hospital, if that is indeed necessary.” He did not have his umbrella and his hair was mussed, coal dust on his cheek. There was a bad-looking gash in one arm, cutting through the fabric of his suit jacket and shirt. There was blood dripping down off the ends of his fingers.

“Mycroft?” Greg asked, controlling his voice.

Mycroft looked half-eager to see him. “Surely, Detective Inspector, you can convince them that I do not need to be _transported_ to hospital, 95% of my body is entirely fine.”

Greg came closer, into the crazed and swirling lights of the ambulance and squad cars. There was fear and exhaustion in Mycroft’s face, along with the subtle hard clamp in his muscles of pain. “You going to bleed in your fancy car?”

Mycroft huffed, turning away in anger.

“It’s a liability thing, I’m serious, they have to take you. But I’ll tell you what, I’ll follow behind, when we’re finished up here, and see if they won’t let you go a bit earlier. You’re not the only one with influence around here.” Greg smiled at him, teasing and sincere at once.

Mycroft blanched. “That won’t be necessary, I’m sure, I’m entirely capable of discharging myself, really, I—.”

“Get in the ambulance, Mycroft!” Greg said, and walked away without looking back.

It was an hour before he made it to the hospital, having supervised the end of the police response in Bethnal Green. He was exhausted, but he remembered his promise to Mycroft. In the lift up to the third floor, he checked his phone to discover he had three missed calls from the man himself. Frowning, he hurried to the assigned room.

Mycroft was sitting on the bed, and rose when he saw Greg. “Thank goodness,” he said, flushed and anxious, “You don’t have my umbrella, do you? Did you receive my calls? It was left behind, the ambulance maniacs wouldn’t let me out to go back for it, it’s really _quite_ inconvenient—.”

“Mycroft, hold on, hold on. Forget about the umbrella for a moment, seriously.”

He was about to reply, with increased agitation, but he stopped himself suddenly, closed his eyes. The inimitable Mycroft Holmes control. “If you don’t have it,” he said at last, “Why did you come?”

“I said I’d come and retrieve you. I know you were having some trouble walking,” Greg teased.

His smile evaporated as he watched Mycroft flinch, a momentary awful flicker of pain. “What? What did I say? Jesus, are you alright?”

Mycroft took a visible deep breath, calming himself. He was deeply shaken, more than Greg had at first realised. He turned toward the far wall of the hospital room. Greg now knew him well enough to recognize this as a signature gesture: to hide his face from a conversation, to protect an impassivity he could not actually accomplish. Greg waited for a long moment. Finally Mycroft said, his voice low and remote, “Did you ever wonder why I am never seen without my umbrella?”

Greg blinked, putting together the pieces. “It’s not an umbrella. It’s a walking stick, isn’t it. You need it.”

“I assure you it’s completely functional as an umbrella as well,” he said, and turned back to Greg, formal and wry. “I’ll spare you the displeasure of a visual aid, but yes, I had my leg badly injured in an accident ten years ago. Lots of— _crushed bone_. Reconstructed as well as possible. I can still walk, you understand.”

“But not as far,” Greg said, watching him. “Not without pain.”

“No.” Mycroft looked at his hands.

Greg was aware of how viscerally Mycroft _hated_ talking about this, how intensely he had concealed it. To carry an umbrella every day of the year, to embrace a strange eccentricity so no one could see his limp—. It bespoke a tyrannical need for privacy.

Greg was aware, too, of the other cracks in Mycroft’s veneer. He’d been relieved of his jacket, shirt, and tie—perhaps cut out of them. He stood by the side of the hospital bed in his wingtips and suit trousers, elegantly cut with a delicate pinstripe. The braces must have been folded up with the tie. On top he wore only his thin white undershirt, short-sleeved and slim fitting. On his left arm, over the bicep, was a thick gauze bandage. Mycroft was slender and delicate under the T-shirt. His chest was perfectly flat, no flab or pecs, flat and smooth all the way to his slim waist. His shoulders, through the clinging cotton, were thin but straight, stiff with good posture taught by long, exhaustive training. His bare arms were freckled and barely dusted with fine hair. It all made a soft, feminine contrast to his full beard and height. The contrast was… interesting. Greg searched for more words and failed to find them. It was an interesting contrast. He was compelled to look. Nothing more.

“Sit,” he said, feeling unmoored.

“I assure you, Lestrade, I can stand without a walking stick.”

“You’ve just gone through a physical trauma,” Greg said, slow, as if talking to a stupid person, very aware that he wasn’t. “Recent trauma experiences give people trouble making decisions. They are reassured by simple and straightforward directions.” He was quoting straight from the crisis management handbook.

Mycroft blinked at him. “I would not classify this as a trauma, but even if it were, I have experienced plenty and am consequently in perfect control of my faculties. I tell you I am content standing.”

Greg sighed. He was thinking about logistics and about his empty stomach and the fact that he had washed the sheets but not yet actually made his bed, but he was also _looking_. At the snug neckline of Mycroft’s T-shirt, pressed against his pale neck below his Adam’s apple. At the long fingers that came up to rub at the bristly hair over his chin. At the way he was now obviously favouring his left leg. “Will you be _content_ to walk down the long corridor down to the lift and out of the main mezzanine down the block to the closest point your car will be able to retrieve you?” He could hear but not manage the harshness in his voice.

Mycroft grimaced slightly, unable to hide it.

“Alright then.” Greg went into the corridor toward the nurse’s station. When he returned, Mycroft was sitting on the bed, not looking at his phone, just waiting. “The aesthetics are lacking,” Greg said, trying to smile, “But I suppose it’ll do until we can get the umbrella.” He held out a cane, hospital-issue and utilitarian, made of lightweight metal with no-slip plastic grips at the handle and base.

There was palpable relief in Mycroft’s expression when he saw it. Shame too. He did not reach out for it. Greg walked up to him, close, and put the cane in his hand. “You should have told me,” he said softly. “I would have found it, and brought it.”

Mycroft shook his head. “It is—not in my nature.”

Greg sighed. “No, I guess not.” He yawned. “Is your arm alright? Lots of stitches?”

“It’s fine.” Mycroft wasn’t moving to leave. Greg had the slightest suspicion that he didn’t want Greg to see him using the cane.

They were standing very close now. Greg could see the faint impression of chest hair under the T-shirt, and the gooseflesh on his arms from the cold hospital air. He smelt cologne and soot and iodine. Greg remembered the floating feeling, sliding through his own fatigue, without trying to manage it, and he swallowed. “Mycroft,” he said, “Stand up, please.”

“Why?”

Greg looked at him until he complied. “Because I want the full experience while I try this,” he said, and kissed him.

After a startled moment, he began kissing back. Mycroft’s lips were soft and warm, that was familiar; unfamiliar was the bristle and rub of the beard around it. Greg had never tilted his head up to kiss someone before. He had never felt his own chest press against one without the bulk and give of breasts, just a flat, solid expanse. He did, however, recognize the hitch that came through his own breath, a little stutter of arousal. He had to stop for a moment to catch his breath, pressing his forehead to the side of Mycroft’s face, and Mycroft breathed, “Lestrade.” Greg did not answer; the moment had not ended; he didn’t want to grapple yet. He kissed him harder, pushed his body forward against his. His tongue teased at the corner of Mycroft’s mouth and Mycroft, with a repressed groan, opened his mouth for it. Greg’s hands were around Mycroft’s waist, holding the small of his back, which was so _warm_. Mycroft, with some hesitation, brought his hands up to lie flat on Greg’s chest, the lapels of his jacket. Greg sought the primary difference he expected in the experience, the pressure of a trouser-front against his own, which would definitely find—something—not nothing, an amorphous something—but he couldn’t feel Mycroft’s body below the waist. After a moment he realised that Mycroft was angling his hips away from him so that they did not touch. Working on a hunch, Greg stepped one foot between Mycroft’s legs and pressed in.

Mycroft gasped and pulled out of the kiss. Greg’s thigh found him extremely hard, confined in the well-tailored suit trousers. Kissing him had made Mycroft hard. He hadn’t wanted Greg to know. Greg felt fundamentally calm, rational, evaluating. _Do I like this? What is this new feeling like_? At the same time he knew that his racing heart and flushed face meant that he did. Mycroft rested his face against Greg’s shoulder, his suit jacket that probably smelled like smoke. Greg could hear his breathing. Both their chests were heaving.

After a moment Mycroft straightened up. His cheeks were bright red and he looked young and flustered and… _pretty_. Fuck. “You have no idea what you’re doing, do you?” He asked, breathless.

“Not particularly,” Greg said, smiling, and kissed him again.

This time Mycroft seemed more ready. He took Greg’s face in his hands and kissed him forcefully, tilting his chin up to meet his own mouth. Greg took Mycroft’s lower lip between his teeth. Mycroft made a little whine that sounded entirely involuntary. The kiss crested in intensity, surges of arousal moving through Greg, making him quite distinctly hard, and then it broke. They were both breathing audibly. Mycroft’s breath was hot on Greg’s cheek. Greg discovered that his own hands were bunched in the back of that bloody undershirt.

After a moment to catch his breath, Mycroft straightened up once again, cleared his throat. His mouth was wet and swollen from kissing and he was flushed and blotchy down to his neck. He visibly worked to regain his composure. Greg did not interrupt the process.

Finally Mycroft said, “Lestrade—Greg—if this serves as an attempt to thank me for helping Constable Hartman, I assure you it is not necessary.”

Greg’s mouth fell open. “Are you fucking kidding?” He moved to kiss Mycroft again, but he flinched away. “What?”

Mycroft looked down, schooling his expression. “Alright, no, then,” he murmured. “But—”

“But what?”

Mycroft shook his head. He had evidently lost his appetite for vulnerability.

“Have I done something I shouldn’t?” Greg scraped his hand through his hair, trying to catch his breath.

“Yes,” Mycroft said immediately, but his expression was ambiguous.

“This should happen again,” he said, taking a risk.

Mycroft twisted his mouth. “No, it shouldn’t… But it might.”

~~~

There’s no one Greg could think of to tell that he’d kissed a man, and that the man had been Mycroft Holmes. For the first day or two, he went about feeling quietly bohemian and open-minded and sexually confident. Unlike the blokes he worked with, he had gone to school with, he was secure enough in his masculinity to try something new. To admit that he’d liked it. Quite a lot, actually. He’d wanked in the shower when he’d returned home that night. And several nights since.

After the first few days, he felt disoriented, overwhelmed by what the choice meant.

After that, he just wanted to see Mycroft again: confirm a hypothesis, pursue it further, learn more about the secretive generosity of this infuriating person. Not to mention— _get off_. Be able to stop thinking about sex, about soft lips and rough ginger beard, for more than an hour. Get it out of his system.

Mycroft did not call.

Ten days after they’d kissed, Greg decided to take matters into his own hands and text. He’d waited so long not because he was intimidated to try it again, but rather because he worried that Mycroft would refuse, or worse, deny the whole thing had ever happened. _It shouldn’t… but it might._ Greg didn’t know how he felt about being a failure of will, an indiscretion.

Then again, he hadn’t told anyone either.

~~~

[20:47]

Message to: Mycroft Holmes

Did you ever get your umbrella back?

[6:15]

Message to: DI Lestrade

No. I have several others, however. MH

[7:00]

Message to: Mycroft Holmes

I feel terrible that I didn’t grab it at the scene.

[7:05]

Message to: DI Lestrade

You weren’t to know its real utility. MH

[7:07]

Message to: Mycroft Holmes

Well, thanks for telling me. I’m glad you have others.

[9:15]

Message to: DI Lestrade

I did not have much choice in the matter. That being said, you’re welcome. I appreciated your assistance. MH

[11:38]

Message to: Mycroft Holmes

I don’t regret what we did on that night, by the way. Actually I’ve been thinking about it a lot.

[11:39]

Message to: DI Lestrade

I’ll admit I had wondered. It would be within your rights. MH

[11:41]

Message to: Mycroft Holmes

To regret it? Well I don’t.

I’d kind of like it to happen again.

With less hospitals and crime.

How’s your arm, by the way?

[21:49]

Message to: DI Lestrade

My arm is healing well, thank you. MH

[22:21]

Message to: Mycroft Holmes

Mycroft.

[8:40]

Message to: Mycroft Holmes

Do you want it to happen again?

Come over tonight.

[18:13]

Message to: DI Lestrade

Tonight I am in Dublin. MH

[19:01]

Message to: Mycroft Holmes

When will you be back?

Mycroft didn’t answer the text for four days. Greg felt he’d exhausted his reserves of forwardness and bravery. Maybe he’d been a bad kisser, or particularly bad at kissing a bloke. Perhaps Mycroft hated him. Perhaps Mycroft didn’t date, and Greg had thrown himself at him completely inappropriately. He remembered Mycroft talking about his friend at Oxford, who was straight, and then saying, _I wasn’t interested in_ —. And stopping. Not interested in men? Not interested in sex? Not interested in shagging a friend?

Greg felt more upset by his lack of answers to these questions than he did about having first kissed a man, and liking it, at age 46.

On the fifth day, Mycroft texted.

[9:27]

Message to: DI Lestrade

I have returned to London. MH

[9:48]

Message to: Mycroft Holmes

Welcome back! I assume that if you’re sharing this information with me, you want me to do something about it. :)

[9:49]

Message to: DI Lestrade

I am answering your question. MH

[9:50]

Message to: Mycroft Holmes

Come over tonight.

If you say no, I won’t ask again, I promise.

[12:01]

Message to: DI Lestrade

What time? MH

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come say hi at thegables.tumblr.com!


	4. Chapter Four

Mycroft showed up promptly at nine dressed for a job interview. It was the first weekend necessitating a coat in London and Mycroft’s was black wool, long and warm-looking and elegant. He was holding an identical umbrella.

“Hi,” Greg said, feeling bad about his flat and his clothes. “This is kind of cliché, but I was thinking—martinis.”

Mycroft let his eyes fall shut, his enthusiasm for the idea clear. He said only, “Martinis are not a postprandial drink, Gregory.” The nickname amused and pleased Greg. It was the first real liberty Mycroft had ever taken.

“They are if that’s what we want to drink. What’s postprandial? Just say after-dinner, Christ.” He couldn’t stop smiling; he had not had to tell Mycroft to drop the _Detective Inspector._

“Martinis are not an after-dinner drink, Gregory.” He was flirting. He was standing there in a three piece suit with watch chain and cufflinks and tiny poppy pin, and flirting. The door was shut and Greg could do what he liked, so he leaned up and kissed him without preamble.

His lips were cold for the first moment, but the plush, slick interior of his mouth was warm. Very precisely, very cautiously, Mycroft’s hands came to cuff the back of Greg’s neck. Greg realised after a moment that Mycroft was nervous, very nervous. He pulled away. “Hey,” he said. “We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.”

Mycroft huffed against Greg’s temple. “Surely I should be saying this to you.”

“You still can, if you like. I didn’t plan on doing anything I don’t want to.”

Mycroft raised an eyebrow. He didn’t speak; he swallowed audibly. He seemed a little miserable, as though he’d rather be anywhere else.

“Jesus,” Greg sputtered, blushing, “did I pressure you into this? If you aren’t—you don’t have to—seriously, it’s not a big deal.”

“Gregory,” Mycroft interrupted, his expression tight, “Let’s have that martini, shall we?”

The alcohol was bracing. It seemed to loosen each of Mycroft’s joints, the severity of his expression.

With olives on his breath, Greg said, “How long is that tie going to stay on?”

“Well, Detective Inspector,” he said haughtily. He leaned the umbrella against the wall and began to remove his cufflinks, a gesture that inexplicably sent a surge of greedy arousal through Greg’s body, “I suppose that would be up to you.”

So it would be like this; there would be no questions about each other’s days. There would be no dinner or polite interrogation or uncertainty about segueing from one activity to another. There would be one drink, and then there would be this. Greg watched Mycroft Holmes take off his cufflinks and got half an erection out of it. He gestured down the tiny corridor to his bedroom, the bed carefully made. Even without the disguised walking stick, Mycroft’s limp was hardly noticeable. Standing at the foot of the bed, Mycroft removed his jacket and pocket watch, set them aside neatly. Then he looked expectantly at Greg and tilted his chin up, exposing his neck. The line of his beard tapered into his throat, which was smooth and hairless, patterned with dimly evident freckles. He wanted, Greg realised, for him to remove the tie.

With self-consciously steady fingers, Greg worked the knot loose. He’d never done this from the other side of the tie before. Mycroft’s tie was pale grey and made of slippery weightless silk. When it came free, Greg laid it to the side. Then he unbuttoned Mycroft’s top two shirt buttons, exposing more skin and the first hint of dark red chest hair. He was not wearing an undershirt today.

Mycroft’s gaze flicked down to Greg’s, who finally understood something. _He’s waiting for me to realise he’s a man._

Greg unfastened one more button, and then leaned in and licked at Mycroft’s skin, feeling the hair coarse and bitter with cologne under his tongue. Mycroft made an ambiguous sound. His fingers came up to pinch at the sides of Greg’s jumper. “Take it off,” Greg murmured.

Mycroft obeyed, pulling the jumper over Greg’s head, then his T-shirt.

Greg meant to finish the half-unbuttoned dress shirt, but suddenly he got greedy. He pulled him by the collar down to his mouth and kissed him, then threaded his hands inside the shirt to encircle his waist. This kiss was not like the others; it was bossy and demanding, an impatient messy thing. Their teeth knocked for a moment. Greg’s fingers kneaded into the very soft dip at the small of Mycroft’s back. “Off, off, off,” he said when he pulled out of the kiss, and then set to unbuttoning the shirt himself. They both stripped the rest of their clothes off.

“I take it you know more about this than I do,” Greg confirmed as they climbed onto the bed.

“I should think so, yes.” Mycroft’s expression managed to look exasperated and aroused simultaneously.

“Are you in charge, then?”

“You invited me here, Gregory, you—mmf—you tell me.” And Mycroft closed his mouth around Greg’s collarbone and _gnawed_. Greg felt his cock jump.

“All I know is that I—” he was panting and had to leave breaks in his sentences to breathe “—want to get my hands on you. Want to—mess you up a little bit.” 

He found himself pinning Mycroft to the bed, straddling his hips. This was further than he had expected to get so quickly. Greg paused and looked down at Mycroft underneath him; his sleek torso descending to narrow, boyish hips, a fair amount of coiled dark red hair, and his prick, so hard that it was flopped up against his stomach. All of him was lithe and pale and neat. His waist was as trim and pretty as a girl’s; his chest was patched with hair. His cock was not large, at least by Greg’s small sample size, and so elegant that it begged to be touched. Underneath Greg’s body, Mycroft’s thighs were slender and creamy and subtly muscled. He caught the top edge of a scar, but he knew better than to examine it now. The entire tableau was vexing and confusing to Greg, predominantly because he found it arousing in a way he had never found a man arousing before. Feminine and masculine washing into each other, all centered in a person he also knew to be powerful, and unyielding, and kind.

“What?” Mycroft asked, peering up uncertainly at Greg’s face.

Greg smiled. “You’re waiting for me to be psyched out. I’m not.”

“Oh?” Mycroft tried and failed to sound nonchalant.

“I’m just—looking at you.”

“Well. Stop.” He grabbed at Greg’s wrist, pulling him forward.

Greg let himself be pulled, so he fell over Mycroft’s chest. He planted his hands on either side of Mycroft’s head and propped himself up with a knee between his legs. There was warmth and sweat and _contact_ in their chests meeting. “Will I do?” Greg murmured into his ear.

“Needs must,” Mycroft muttered, with half a smile, and reached between them to grab Greg’s cock.

~~~

When it was over, they laid in the sheets for a long moment, coming down. There was a mess on Greg’s chest and he had a bruise rising on his collarbone and he was still breathing hard. He looked over at Mycroft and found him in a similar state. He had a pink blotch blossoming at the base of his neck. Greg’s orgasm had left him trembly and boneless. When he looked at Mycroft, whose hair was mussed and chest sweaty, he felt a peculiar little sharp edge of affection. He got the sense that he had pulled back many layers of old carpet and found hardwood beneath.

“Fuck,” he breathed. “That was—extremely fun.”

Mycroft gave a weak, breathless laugh, a genuine one. Then he laughed harder for a minute. “I happen to agree,” he said finally.

Greg rolled over and planted a sloppy kiss on his shoulder. “Do you want a shower?”

“Ah—I think, when I arrive at home—if I can borrow a flannel for the time being.”

This cleared up one of Greg’s questions. He hadn’t been sure whether to ask him to stay. “Of course.” He wet two flannels with warm water and they cleaned themselves up in a perfunctory way. Watching Mycroft Holmes wash come off his gingery narrow chest and stomach was one of the more unexpected sights of Greg’s life. It was… not displeasing. His own chest clean, he went to Mycroft and rested a hand on his bare hip. This seemed to surprise him. “Is this okay?” Greg asked.

“Yes, of course,” Mycroft said, leaving the _you recently rutted your cock against it in pleasure_ unspoken. But a faint glimmer of discomfort showed in his face.

His skin was warm and the curve of bone and flesh beneath it a lovely, barely arced shape. “Tell me straight,” Greg said, grinning, “Did I stretch your patience too much? Was I too green for it to be any good?”

Mycroft stood, his face impassive. “Your confident expression tells me you know that’s not true,” he said.

Greg huffed a laugh. “I hoped.”

Mycroft moved toward the neat pile of his discarded clothes. “I will simply reassure you that you have nothing to worry about.”

This was not quite the praise that Greg would have enjoyed. “Well, I’ll have to get some more practice.” He was already thinking about what he’d like to do to Mycroft, have Mycroft do to him, the next time.

Mycroft turned away to put on his pants and trousers, but there was a frown in his voice. “Yes, I suppose you could.”

Greg gave a sharp _ha!_ He sensed Mycroft’s ill ease but could not put his finger on what had caused it. He moved to the window. “Christ, it’s absolutely pouring. Cats and dogs. Do you want to—you could stay for a while, till it lets up.”

When he turned back Mycroft was almost entirely dressed. He was actually in the process, somewhat unbelievably, of fastening his cufflinks. “That’s tempting,” he said in an even voice.

“You don’t sound tempted.”

He sighed. “I’ve had a very pleasant evening, Gregory. Sadly I have some tasks to complete when I arrive at home. Emails I’ve neglected, briefings for tomorrow.”

 _I don’t believe you_. Greg watched him button his jacket. “You’ll call a car?”

“I just have; it should be here soon.”

“I suppose you’ve thought of everything.”

“Merely the essentials, I assure you.” Fully attired, he came to where Greg was standing naked by the window. He kissed Greg briefly on the mouth, momentarily reviving all of the sensations of minutes earlier.

“One more question.”

“Mm?”

“What do you do, when it rains? About your umbrella?”

Mycroft was silhouetted in the doorway now, dressed to merge corporations or dissolve tariff sanctions. There was still a flushed glow of sex on his skin. He raised both eyebrows mildly. “I limp,” he said.

Minutes later he was gone.

[10:20]

Message to: Mycroft Holmes

At the risk of sounding too eager, I had a really good time last night. I hope you did too. I’d like to do it again, but you seemed uncomfortable. I guess the ball’s in your court now.

[23:07]

Message to: Greg Lestrade

My discomfort had little to do with you. I am an awkward person, as you’ve no doubt discovered. MH

[23:22]

Message to: Greg Lestrade

I had a good time as well. MH

[23:25]

Message to: Mycroft Holmes

Well, good.

[23:26]

Message to: Greg Lestrade

I’m afraid I do not excel at the rebound, or the volley? I am not expert in American basketball metaphors. MH

[23:40]

Message to: Mycroft Holmes

Let me know if you want to see each other again, Mycroft. Good night.

[23:41]

Message to: Greg Lestrade

Good night, Gregory. MH

~~~

It was the use of his full name in that last text—a liberty of intimacy that Mycroft had claimed entirely on his own, and for no real reason—that Greg held on to any hope at all for kissing him again. That and the sounds he had made as Greg licked at his hip, the V of his pelvis, and then moved inward. Greg remembered those moans and felt less rejected. He also remembered them and wanked in the shower. But Mycroft did not text. At the next crime scene that might benefit from his intervention, the PA came instead.

Shannon had midterms and skipped two lunches in a row. Sally resented his call on a crucial court case and they didn’t speak civilly for days. The weather grew grayer and the days shorter. The one bright spot was the email from [jhartman@hampsteadandkilburn.co.uk](mailto:jhartman@hampsteadandkilburn.co.uk), Jessica saying that she was starting her new job, where she had her own tiny office and an email signature that stated her pronouns and a cadre of goofy white, Bengali, and black coworkers who had welcomed her with fervor. He skated by on the joy of that email for longer than he’d like to admit.

Still, at the end of the second week, he found himself in front of his telly with his third beer, aimlessly flicking through channels, thinking about the face of the woman he’d informed that day that her son had been killed by a drunk driver. _If I were a shittier dad—if I were more like my own father—_ he thought _—I would guilt Shannon into coming over here and watching Paddington 2 again._ It would give him solace to see her, alive and whole and vibrant, after the day he’d had. But Shannon was 18 and building a new world for herself and did not need that burden, and also, relatedly, he did not want her to see him like this. He did not want anyone to see him like this, but he knew he would not feel better until someone had seen him. Touched him, in whatever cursory friendly way.

~~~

[20:02]

Message to: Mycroft Holmes

Is the British government developing a comforting robot that can give bad news to families so humans don’t have to do it anymore?

[20:05]

Message to: Greg Lestrade

Not presently. Would you like me to make inquiries? MH

[He’d texted back right away.]

[20:06]

Message to: Mycroft Holmes

Yes please.

[20:07]

Message to: Greg Lestrade

You delivered a particularly upsetting piece of bad news today. MH

[20:07]

Message to: Mycroft Holmes

19 year old kid killed by drunk driver. The only kid his mum had. He was working two jobs to support.

[20:09]

Message to: Greg Lestrade

I’m very sorry, Gregory. MH

[20:10]

Message to: Mycroft Holmes

Don’t apologise to me. It didn’t happen to me.

[20:12]

Message to: Greg Lestrade

In a way, it did. MH

Sharing news like that must be very taxing. MH

[20:15]

Message to: Mycroft Holmes

Yeah, it’s just been a bit of a shit week. It’ll be alright.

[20:25]

Message to: Greg Lestrade

I’m not well versed in reassurances. But I regret that your week has been unpleasant. Mine, too, as a matter of fact. But I don’t want to change the subject from your own predicament. MH

[20:25]

Message to: Mycroft Holmes

You’re allowed to talk about your own ‘predicament.’

Do you need to be distracted?

[20:26]

Message to: Greg Lestrade

I confess this texting conversation already constitutes a distraction, albeit a welcome one. I’m working from home this evening. MH

[20:29]

Message to: Mycroft Holmes

Mycroft. I’m asking you if you want to come over.

Maybe we could both do with some more hands-on distraction.

[20:30]

Message to: Greg Lestrade

Unfortunately, I do have work to do. MH

It can wait. MH

Half an hour? MH

[20:31]

Message to: Mycroft Holmes

The door’s unlocked.

I’m out of vermouth.

[20:31]

Message to: Greg Lestrade

Understood. MH

Mycroft arrived 35 minutes later with the poshest bottle of vermouth Greg had ever seen. As soon as Greg saw him, he realised that he hadn’t asked what had given him a hard week. He was pale, and though his beard was immaculately trimmed, there were deep shadows under his eyes and a certain exhausted tightness about his mouth. He leaned slightly more obviously upon the umbrella than he usually did. Greg wasn’t sure if this was because his leg was hurting him, or because Greg already knew about its real purpose, so it needn’t be hidden. At the same time, he was dressed more casually than Greg had ever seen him, and the result was… strangely transfixing. He wore posh leather trainers, dark green chinos, and a beige cashmere jumper that looked impossible soft. For a moment Greg forgot about sex entirely and dreamed of pressing his face into Mycroft’s chest, feeling the solidness of his body and the fleecy texture of the jumper. Just standing there, against somebody taller and more composed than him.

“Hi,” he said.

“Gregory,” Mycroft said, and his hands were on Greg’s hips and then Greg was thinking about sex again.

“Does your leg hurt?”

“Not worth mentioning,” Mycroft said into Greg’s hair. His hands were soft and hungry, running over Greg’s shoulder blades and waist and the nape of his neck.

“That means yes.”

“Mm.”

Greg kissed him, trying to focus on sex, on the terms of the visit, not on his desire to hold and be held. It was that sort of mood where the ache inside him would best be soothed by looking after someone else. He swallowed back the seditious desire to rub Mycroft’s shoulders and ask about his week. _He doesn’t want that. He came here to get off and leave._

He had the vague feeling that the scrape of Mycroft’s beard against his face was making him awake. “Do you need a martini?”

“Only if you do. Hm, maybe after.”

Greg took the vermouth from his hand and cast it on the tiny coffee table. He nearly dropped to his knees right there, but then, remembering Mycroft’s leg, said, “Sit down.”

There was a burst of new data as he saw what effect the command had on Mycroft. He obeyed, sitting on Greg’s prized possession, rescued from his divorce, the expensive creased and weathered leather sofa that he’d spent half his life on. Greg pushed the coffee table back to make room for him to kneel between Mycroft’s legs. He parted them and nuzzled his face over Mycroft’s fly.

“Greg,” Mycroft said, his voice tight.

“Should I not?” He could feel Mycroft hardening through the fabric, and there was something undeniable about this, to feel in such concrete terms the effect he was having on this important and severe person.

“No, you—” Mycroft stuttered, which did not count as a refusal, so Greg continued. After a moment he grabbed Mycroft’s hand and brought it to tangle in his own hair, and was rewarded with a little involuntary gasp. Mycroft rubbed his hand over Greg’s scalp as he nudged, with clumsy enthusiasm, at his trouser-front.

After a moment, satisfied with his results, he opened the fly and dragged down the trousers and boxer briefs for access. Mycroft’s cock, already impressively hard, sprang up obediently. In another, less desperate mood, Greg might have been intimidated by this new undertaking. As it was he wanted to make Mycroft come down his throat. As galvanizing, as distracting and intense, as fingernails pressed into the skin or cold coffee on the eighth hour of a stakeout. He glanced up to see Mycroft flushed and squeezing his lips together. “Be patient with me, now,” Greg said, his voice husky and low, and then he licked a long stripe.

Every one of Mycroft’s muscles seized. He was evidently struggling to be still.

Greg tried to summon up his extremely limited knowledge of gay scenes in films and the occasional cheeky anecdote of an old gay friend from school. Then he realised that his own instincts—what he _wanted_ to do—was probably a better source of insight. He ran his fingers, just feeling, over Mycroft’s cock. Feeling the soft skin and hardness beneath, the ridge of the head and the little flick of surging arousal when Greg touched him there. Mycroft made a strangled sound.

Greg looked up at him. He was squeezing his eyes and mouth shut. Greg reached lower and, very gently, touched his balls. Mycroft’s hips jerked. “Say please,” Greg rumbled.

Mycroft blushed anew. “ _Please_.”

Greg closed his lips around the head and his hand around the base. The effect was immediate. As Mycroft moaned, closed-mouth still, Greg explored with his tongue, tried light suction, gave gentle pressure with his hand. As soon as he thought he had gathered sufficient early research, Mycroft bucked and said urgently, “Greg—. Greg, I will— _stop_.”

Greg did not stop. He hummed around Mycroft’s cock and pumped with his hand, and after a moment Mycroft gave a soft, desperate cry and came, filling Greg’s mouth. A little overwhelmed by the sensation, he managed to swallow inefficiently and sat back, wiping his mouth. His throat ached a little and he was self-satisfied and very, very hard. “Christ,” he said.

Mycroft didn’t speak. He was very pink against the muted beige of his sweater and his eyes were wide. After a long moment he said, “You are extremely disobedient.”

Greg’s eyebrows shot up. “You are extremely obedient.”

Mycroft made a harsh wordless sound of demurral, not a successful one.

“Was it alright that I wasn’t obedient?” Greg ran his hand over his hair and discovered, with satisfaction, how much Mycroft had ruffled it.

Mycroft huffed. He seemed about to give a detailed answer, and then only: “Yes.”

“That was—extremely hot,” Greg admitted. “I liked doing that a lot.”

Mycroft blinked. He seemed fundamentally surprised. Then he shook his head, righting himself, and said, “Bed, now.”

In the bedroom, they both disrobed and stood beside the bed, kissing with absorption. Chest to chest, arms around each other, Greg’s cock pressed hard and throbbing between them. There came a moment where Greg could have made a demand, but he found himself less enthusiastically bossy about his own pleasure than about Mycroft’s. He felt nearly shy.

He let Mycroft coax him onto the bed, still tangled in each other, Mycroft’s mouth hot on his neck. Mycroft began to move down his body, kisses headed toward his cock, ready to reciprocate. Greg wanted the experience, but he couldn’t stop thinking about their first time, two weeks before. “Wait, wait,” he said, breathless. “Could you please—I just want to rub against you—like last time—thrust on your hip—is that alright?”

“Gregory,” was all Mycroft said. He reached for the lube in the night table and slicked Greg’s cock, with devastating attention to the head, the glans, and his balls. Then he laid back on the bed beside him. He whispered into Greg’s ear, “I want you to fuck me.”

Greg understood this in the nonliteral way it was meant. “ _Fuck_.” He rolled over and pushed himself up over Mycroft, lapping at his nipple, his shoulder, and began to roll his hips. His cock slid gorgeously in the crease of Mycroft’s hip. It combined the thrusting sensation of fucking with the simple, juvenile pleasure of rutting and rubbing. To hold Mycroft as he did, to see how it all affected him too, made the entire experience nearly unbearable. _Next time_ , he thought, _I really am going to fuck you._

Mycroft’s hands snaked down and groped at Greg’s arse, squeezing and scraping. This surprised him a little, a new liberty, a new erotic zone, and one that seemed more explicitly gay somehow. Just as he was wondering how it felt, Mycroft grabbed even harder at the meat of his arse and muttered, “Christ, you are—” and that was more or less it for him.

Greg moaned aloud and thrust even harder against him, and then, whispering, “ _fuck, fuck,”_ he came across Mycroft’s stomach, a long surge of pleasure that took every ounce of his energy and gave him an exhaustive wave of shattering bliss in response. He collapsed beside Mycroft, half in his armpit, panting with exertion. They were quiet. Through his orgasm haze, Greg felt his heart constrict at the pleasure he felt merely at lying beside him.

After a moment, he propped himself up on one elbow. “I—wow.” He huffed an embarrassed laugh. “I swear I can go longer than that. In theory. Haven’t, with you. But I do have some stamina on a good day.”

Mycroft was silent and still for a moment. Then he said, “I’m afraid you have a similar effect on me.”

Greg couldn’t hide his smile. “We are not good for each other’s egos,” he said, craning his neck so he could look at Mycroft’s face. “But we are good for—er, relaxation.”

Mycroft smiled too, a little uncertainly but with real pleasure. “I do feel relaxed,” he said simply.

Greg laughed. His eyelids were heavy. “We’ve done the impossible,” he teased, gripping Mycroft’s shoulder. “Stay,” he said, “we could go again, improve our times. I owe you a martini, anyway.”

“I really am not doing my job so far, of indoctrinating you into proper gay sex activities,” Mycroft said, his voice sleepy and pompous at once. “I suppose I’d better.”

“And the vermouth, don’t forget,” Greg said, and fell asleep.

He did not dream, unless you mean an unconscious awareness of Mycroft dozing by his side.

He awoke an hour or two later to Mycroft’s mouth on his cock.

This second time was less desperate, more focused. They were teaching each other something dangerous, giving each other access to powerful and intimate knowledge.

Afterwards, Greg went to wash his hands and chest in the bathroom. Mycroft came in a moment later, his steps small and careful, and Greg handed him a flannel to wash up with. When they were clean, Greg rubbed his face lustfully against Mycroft’s chest, the sensation of soft damp skin and rough hair and _Mycroft._ Who flinched a little when he did it.

“Sorry, stubble,” he mumbled.

“You’re asleep on your feet,” Mycroft said, stern, but his hand was on Greg’s back.

“Haven’t been sleeping.” He looked up blearily into Mycroft’s face. “Stay. If you want. You can stay.”

Mycroft bit his lip. He looked distressed. “I’d like to.”

“That means no.”

Mycroft huffed helplessly. “It isn’t judicious, on any front—.”

“I don’t care about judicious, do you?” He caught Mycroft’s sober, nervous look. “You do.”

“I apologise.”

“It’s alright, Mycroft, really.” He yawned. “Sometime, right? More variables in the experiment. Lots more things to try.”

“Yes,” Mycroft said, his voice very, very far away.

“What?”

“Nothing. Greg—I—must go. This has been—very relaxing, I am appreciative.”

“Yeah, of course.” Greg felt abruptly bereft, though he’d hadn’t though about the possibility of Mycroft staying the night until moments before. “Alright. Take care, Mycroft, don’t forget—.” He went to fetch the umbrella while Mycroft got dressed, and brought it into the bedroom to pull his boxers on. Mycroft used it gratefully on the way back to the front door.

They were quiet. “The car?” Greg asked.

“It’s here.”

“Oh, yes. Alright, I—thank you for coming over. You saved my week, really.”

Mycroft’s smile was tight and unwilling. “And you, mine,” he said.

Greg reached to kiss him before he could move away. His mouth tasted like nothing, the sweet neutrality of having already merged their tastes, their bodies. His heart twisted. “Home safe,” he said, and let him go.

Twenty minutes later, he texted.

[1:45]

Message to: Mycroft Holmes

I owe you a martini. Next time.

Or at least your bottle of vermouth.

But Mycroft never replied.


	5. Chapter Five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW for a brief mention of police violence in this chapter (not by Greg).

That week, Greg googled “bisexuality” in an incognito browser window. He couldn’t ask Shannon, although her explanation might have been more nuanced, more modern than Wikipedia’s. Nevertheless he understood the concept. It made good sense, the idea that you’d be interested in more than one gender. He wasn’t sure why so many people were skeptical about it. At the same time, he wasn’t sure it described him. He had the vaguest sense that something about himself was in progress, that one day he’d turn a corner and learn something new, but he was only approaching the corner now.

John Watson probably knew something about bisexuality, but Greg didn’t feel like he could ask him either. Finally, he decided to do something fundamentally reckless out of sheer curiosity. He had the right, anyway. Divorced people have already exploded the plan. Sometimes it didn’t hurt to poke at the wreckage.

[16:04]

Message to: Leanna Latham

Hey. When we were married, did you ever wonder if I might be gay?

[16:14]

Message to: Greg

Good grief, where is this coming from?

And yes, actually.

[16:15]

Message to: Leanna Latham

Wait, seriously?

[16:16]

Message to: Greg

Let me state the obvious and say that I am probably not the right person to talk to about this.

But I’m in a generous mood.

So yes, I did sort of wonder. You had these intense friendships. You had that crush on an officer that one time.

[16:24]

Message to: Leanna Latham

Wtf

[16:28]

Message to: Greg

I shudder to ask, but why are you asking?

[16:30]

Message to: Leanna Latham

What officer?

[16:40]

Message to: Greg

Greg. Focus.

Richman? Idk, don’t remember. You would talk about him constantly.

And sometimes during sex… Let’s not get into it.

[16:42]

Message to: Leanna Latham

You never said anything.

[16:44]

Message to: Greg

Well, I was trying to be married to you.

I guess that was my mistake. :)

[16:45]

Message to: Leanna Latham

I mean, I’m sorry? I didn’t know. I wasn’t trying to hide anything.

[16:47]

Message to: Greg

I know. We had other problems.

Why are you asking this now? *Are* you gay?

[17:00]

Message to: Leanna Latham

I have no idea.

[17:03]

Message to: Greg

I mean… I’m asking this out of morbid curiosity and it’s definitely none of my business.

Is there a guy?

[17:04]

Message to: Leanna Latham

Define “a guy.”

He won’t text me back, so.

Sorry, this really isn’t your problem.

But I fancy him, yeah.

[17:07]

Message to: Greg

Bloody hell, Greg, you’re 46.

[17:09]

Message to: Leanna Latham

Believe me, I know.

It’s stupid, forget I asked.

[17:48]

Message to: Greg

It’s not stupid. It’s not really something I want to help with, but it’s not stupid.

Have you talked to S about this?

[17:50]

Message to: Leanna Latham

God, no.

[18:01]

Message to: Greg

Well, maybe you should. She’s a smart kid. Very openminded, lol. Even to her dad.

Look Greg I’ve got to go.

[18:04]

Message to: Leanna Latham

No problem. I mean, thanks. And sorry. For being gay when we were married? Maybe?

[18:09]

Message to: Greg

Lol christ.

It’s fine. It’s in the past. Just, find a friend to talk to about it, right?

[18:11]

Message to: Leanna Latham

Yeah. Sorry.

~~~

Greg made an appointment with the division counselor, but she was booked up for weeks and only had slots in December. In the meantime, he tried not to check his phone too often, in case Mycroft had texted. He tried not to look Sherlock too hard in the eyes, in case a severe and unrequited gay crush could be deduced by his shirt cuffs. He tried not to message Leanna again, probing for more data, because as she’d said—as she’d always said—untangling his feelings was not her job.

The following Friday, he was buoyed by his lunch with Shannon but afterward, he went with Sally and the rest of his team to assist Organised Crime with a major bust. As he gave directions to his constables, packaging evidence and taking gang members to the paddywagon, he saw a sergeant from Organised Crime loom over a young man, barely 18, who had a knife attached to his belt. “He’s armed, he’s armed!” The sergeant bellowed, and began to bludgeon the suspect, over and over again, until he was bloodied and on the floor, half insensate.

“He’s subdued!” Greg yelled, nearly screamed, running across the dark warehouse. “The suspect is _subdued_ , sergeant, stand down.” He put his body between the two men, facing his comrade.

In the sergeant’s eyes was nothing but death. “He’s got a knife,” he said.

“He didn’t _touch_ the knife, now _stand down!_ ” Greg roared. When the situation had deescalated, he went outside and stood in the pouring thin sunlight until Sally came to retrieve him.

That night he could not think about food at all. He cleaned his entire bathroom with a half-empty wine glass balanced on the edge of the sink. Then, every nerve still wrung out, he checked his phone. His last text to Mycroft was from a week before.

[1:45]

Message to: Mycroft Holmes

I owe you a martini. Next time.

Or at least your bottle of vermouth.

1:45 am. They’d spent three hours together, concluding with Mycroft coming across Greg’s chest with Greg’s fingers inside him. Greg’s name in his mouth. Mycroft saying, _I’d like to stay, but it would not be judicious—._ Nothing since then.

Every time Greg tried to resurrect his pride, tried to not need anything, he thought again about the teenager he’d watched his co-worker beat, halfway to death. For a penknife strapped to his belt and brown skin. Greg’s hands were shaking. As if it was his burden to bear, as if he even had the right to be distressed by what he’d seen. It posed no threat to him.

[20:57]

Message to: Mycroft Holmes

Are you busy tonight?

I’d really like to see you.

I could really use the distraction, if I’m honest.

But of course, as he had expected, there was no reply.

~~~

12 days later, Greg was at a crime scene with Sherlock and John. As they uncovered the evidence, John turned to Sherlock and said, “oh shite. You don’t think this is connected to the conspiracy that—”

Sherlock groaned theatrically. “He put us on this trail on purpose. Did he call you, Lestrade?”

“Did who call me?” Greg’s headache and galloping pulse were at war. 

“My broth—” Sherlock did not finish the explanation, apparently in response to a certain arrival. “Your dirty work has already been done, brother mine, why did you bother with all this _legwork_?”

“Sherlock,” Lestrade chided instinctively, and then turned his face away so Sherlock could not see him blush, and Mycroft could not see him at all.

For he was there: umbrella in hand, long camel coat over black suit, his beard dark and full under the streetlights. He looked dreadful and sleep deprived and coldblooded and Greg knew for a fact what he would smell like. What he would say as he came, that he closed the toilet lid after pissing. There were bruises on his chest now that were probably still fading. Greg had made them deep. _Let me keep you; let me lay claim to you._

Mycroft did not look at him. “I am not opposed to legwork when it is required to keep you on task,” he said. The sound of his voice was awful. Greg was too hot in his coat. “If we cannot retrieve the device before the first of the month, the Ukrainians will be none too happy.”

“And whose problem is that?” Sherlock asked. “Not mine. Not John’s. Probably not Lestrade’s. Well, I don’t know, Lestrade, how would you personally be affected by a nuclear arms race with Ukraine? Not an arms race proper, but still, an unfortunate little mix-up—”

Mycroft cut him off. “This is none of Detective Inspector Lestrade’s concern. It is an assignment I gave _you_ in no uncertain terms. Surely you understand the ramifications. Doctor Watson?”

“I’m only a man, Mycroft,” said John, tired.

Sherlock rose in a swirl of coat-tails. “You’ll get your device, not to worry. This was merely a step in the journey. Well, John, we’re off to the nursemaid’s flat, don’t you think?”

“The nursemaid’s flat?” Greg and Mycroft said at the same time. Both stiffened.

Greg let himself look at Mycroft again. He looked more tired than Greg had ever seen him. Perhaps he _was_ preventing a nuclear arms race. But then, that was Mycroft’s job all the time, right? _I needed you. I tore apart my pride and admitted I needed you, and you ignored me_.

He turned his face away. He was far more affected than he had ever expected or permitted himself to be. _Fuck._

“Sherlock—Dr. Watson—be careful, please. And remember the deadline. Thank you, Detective Inspector.”

“Yeah,” Greg said, facing out to the darkness of the empty lot across the street. When he turned back, Mycroft was gone.

~~~

A month passed, and Greg did not hear from any of the three of them. He did not learn whether “the device” had been recovered. He did not know about the Ukranians’ degree of satisfaction. He did not know if Holmes brothers were something he had invented to give his mind something to do. There was just murder, and then paperwork, and then court. Again and again.

Then, on a Tuesday night, Greg did the washing-up and put on the telly for background noise while he folded laundry and did some half-hearted sit-ups and press-ups on the living room floor. He stopped in the middle of sitting up when he heard a knock at the door, which opened directly to the street. Through the peephole he saw Mycroft Holmes.

Greg threw open the door. Mycroft was not wearing a coat. Mycroft was holding a sturdy-looking wooden cane. Mycroft’s car was idling behind him, as if he was not sure whether he’d be admitted.

“What the hell?” Greg managed.

Mycroft took a shaky breath. He looked as if a gust of wind could blow him over. “I haven’t the least right to ask this,” he said, “But may I come in?”

Greg merely opened the door and stepped back. Traitorously his mind registered that he was wearing track bottoms and a ratty T-shirt. But then Mycroft, coatless in the cold, umbrella-less, with his tie loose at his neck, was in the Mycroft version of this attire. “Thank you,” he said, “I didn’t know—.” He couldn’t finish. His steps were fragile, carefully planned things, Greg noticed. His knuckles were white on the cane.

“You’re in pain,” Greg said.

“Yes,” Mycroft said, his eyes slipping closed.

“You’re in a lot of pain,” Greg said. He felt stupefied, confused. Important. 

“Also true. Please—I was wondering if you’d be willing to help me forget.” He seemed to understand the brazenness of this request.

Greg studied his face, not a traditionally handsome one but made lively and intelligent by his eyes, wise and imposing by his beard, soft and sly by his thin, expressive mouth. He looked at the tiny burst blood vessels in the whites of Mycroft’s eyes. The face with the cares of the nation inscribed upon it. Greg felt the old, familiar pull.

“Mycroft,” he said.

Mycroft’s eyes closed again, with the beatific peace of the saints. He folded forward and pressed his face into Greg’s shoulder. “I couldn’t stop myself,” he said into the fabric. “I couldn’t do anything else.” He reached around and rucked up the back of Greg’s T-shirt with both hands. The cane fell with a crack to the floor. His hands were cold on the small of Greg’s back. “Take me to bed. Please.”

“Mycroft.”

“I mean it.”

“You’re upset.”

“I’m in full control of my faculties. Please. Gregory.”

Greg’s hesitation was 80% composed of estimating the likelihood of being able to carry him to the bed. In the end he decided he could not manage this and crouched to pick up the cane instead. “Alright,” he said, “alright.” 

They disrobed at the foot of the bed. Mycroft left his clothes in a heap on the floor, which was the most worrying thing Greg had seen all evening. “Lie back,” he said, “Don’t let me hurt you.”

Mycroft made a low sound in his throat. “I wish you would.”

Greg appraised his face and gathered a sense of what he meant. The idea of tying Mycroft up, of hitting him—in some other, safer world, a world with dinner dates and handholding in it—was extremely appealing. “Now is not the time,” he muttered, and crawled onto the bed beside him.

Mycroft frowned, but said nothing.

“Kiss me.” For a moment Greg had the strangest fear that he would say no. Then: his mouth, the humidity of his breath against Greg’s cheek, the movement of his tongue against Greg’s. Greedy, desperate. Despite everything, Greg was getting hard. Within moments the kisses had become fierce, possessive, intense. They broke apart to breathe, Mycroft’s face buried in Greg’s neck. Greg murmured, “How do you want me?”

Mycroft shuddered. “Please,” he said, his voice hoarse and small. “Don’t give me options.”

“A—alright.”

“ _Take me, please_.” He wound his arms around Greg’s neck, and pulled him down to him.

“Yes,” Greg murmured, “yes.” He had license, then, to be selfish. And what he wanted was to touch.

He raked his hands over Mycroft’s shoulders, his chest, his stomach and sides, his lovely slim hips and quivering thighs. Finally he wrapped his hand around Mycroft’s sleek little cock, rock hard and hot already. Mycroft muffled a cry. “Make _noise_ ,” Greg growled, and bit down on his nipple.

Mycroft made noise.

“That’s better,” Greg whispered against his chest. “I will not stop until you scream. Then I will gently bring you back to earth. You’ll tell me to stop if you need to. Otherwise I _will not stop_. Do you understand?”

Mycroft’s only response was a little mewling sound of assent. His hands were clenched tight around Greg, holding him.

Greg dragged his fingers over Mycroft’s cock, touching and teasing, plucking moans from his mouth. At the same time he applied his teeth to Mycroft’s chest in earnest. _This time it will take even longer to fade_ , he thought, and Mycroft moaned as he dug into his flesh.

Finally, gasping, he found the lube and slicked his fingers. “Open your legs for me,” he murmured. “Show me what you need. Beg me.”

Mycroft whimpered. “I need you inside me. Please.”

“Very good.” Greg moved down on the bed, regretfully moving his own aching cock away from Mycroft’s hip. He rubbed his slippery fingers behind Mycroft’s bollocks, just to the edge of his entrance. He paused there, tracing the circle of muscle. Mycroft was indeed making noise, making small desperate sounds that went straight to Greg’s cock. At last Greg pushed a finger inside him. Mycroft’s hips barely stayed on the bed. Greg worked up to three fingers before he put his mouth anywhere near Mycroft’s cock.

He didn’t need both these things at the same time to come, Greg knew, but he wanted him to feel surrounded, filled up, overwhelmed. He hummed over Mycroft’s cock and sucked hard. He loved the way it felt, slender and delicate and insistent, in his mouth. At the same time his fingers were working against Mycroft’s prostate.

“Fuck, _fuck_ —Gregory—you can’t—I will— _fuck_!” Mycroft began to come with a long, breathy moan, clenching around Greg’s fingers. The orgasm lasted a long time and left Mycroft absolutely insensate with pleasure and exhaustion. He slumped back, legs still spread and cock softening on his stomach. He looked debauched. “I’m sorry,” he breathed, “give me a moment—.”

Greg could not wait a moment and did not want to. Kneeling over Mycroft, he began to fist his own cock, his knees nearly buckling at the delicious pressure at last. “Christ, I can’t wait—”he said, gasping.

Mycroft wearily raised himself up on one elbow to watch. “Oh, _please_ ,” he whispered. “I want—you look so beautiful. I want you to come in my face.”

“Oh?” Greg felt a surge of desperate arousal at the words.

“Please, Greg, come on my face, make a mess of me,” Mycroft begged, and that was all it took. Greg’s orgasm wrung everything out of him. The sight of his come roped across Mycroft’s beard was quite possibly the most devastating image he had ever seen. He slid down beside him and tried to catch his breath. Neither of them spoke, or possibly neither of them could speak. When he’d gathered the energy, Greg retrieved his T-shirt from the floor and used it to wipe the worst of the mess off Mycroft’s face, the fingertips of his other hand tender on Mycroft’s chin. He pulled the rumpled comforter up over them. Mycroft pressed his face into Greg’s chest. They slept.

Greg woke in the night with a little spike of panic, and then he felt Mycroft still sleeping beside him. His mouth slack, his face puffy with sleep, his shoulders hunched. When Greg stirred he felt Mycroft’s feet cold against his legs. He pulled a throw blanket from the lower shelf of his night table and covered Mycroft with it. Then he went back to sleep.

When he woke again in daylight, Mycroft was gone.

He’d barely had time to collect his feelings on this absence before he found the note. It had been written on an old lined telephone pad with a half-dry ballpoint pen, in a script befitting custom stationary. Greg had to sit down to read it. He felt drunk.

Gregory,

I owe you more than I easily articulate in this space. An explanation, firstly, as well as the debt of your kindness and your clarity. I would not blame you if you did not want to speak to me again. I hope you will. Yesterday was one of the most distressing days of my life, I’m afraid, and it was selfish and ultimately, successful, for me to seek solace in you. I thank and apologize to you for that.

If you would contemplate the idea of seeing me again, I would appreciate the opportunity to convey all this, in more detail, in person. Please come to my club, the Diogenes, at 8 pm tonight. If you do not, I shan’t harass you any further.

With my regards,

MH

This document was shocking and inscrutable to Greg. At the same time it reminded him of the glimpses of Mycroft he had gathered throughout their reacquaintance. The sort of person who would say “do not ask me for a favour again,” only to accomplish a miracle, unbidden, behind the scenes. This Mycroft in the letter was full of self-recrimination and regret, and still he made the first active move to see Greg again. The Diogenes, tonight.


	6. Chapter Six

[16:56]

Message to: Mycroft Holmes

Can you tell me why your club isn’t on Google maps?

[16:57]

Message to: Greg Lestrade

Attachment: DiogenesDirections.pdf

A word of advice, based on the arcane social practices of the club: do not speak aloud until we are alone.

This “word of advice” only piqued Greg’s interest and his frustration even more. By 8 o’clock, he had abandoned every theory of what was to come that evening. He arrived at the club in a fresh suit, smoothing his hair, and was met by an elderly porter who greeted him with a friendly tilt of the head. Momentarily at a loss, Greg fished out his ID. When the porter saw his name, his face cleared, and he beckoned Greg down the silent corridor. It had that posh sort of carpet that left margins of hardwood at the edges and was held taut with a complicated bit of metal rigging at each end.

Mycroft’s office was on the second floor; it had his name on a placard beside the door. The porter bowed silently and left Greg there to manage the rest of the evening himself.

He knocked on the door and then realised that Mycroft couldn’t exactly holler, “Come in!” But then he did hear it uttered, very quietly. He opened the door to see a sumptuous club room of the old sort: a boar’s head mounted on one wall, a little fireplace on another. In front of the fire was a sitting area with deep, comfortable looking chairs and sofa. On the far end of the room was a massive desk, the room one’s window behind it. Mycroft was rising from his place behind the desk. “Shut it behind you, thank you,” he said softly. Greg didn’t miss the way he was leaning his weight on the desk with both hands to take pressure off his leg. The cane was leant against the side of the desk.

Greg shut the door and came into the room properly. The fire was lit and the room smelled of old leather and cigarette smoke and good expensive dust. It was a more masculine environment than he’d have expected of Mycroft. He felt very parochial and a little cross, to have been dragged here, Mycroft’s turf, to be apologized to.

“Hi,” he said, his voice a little jumpy.

Mycroft did not smile. “Thank you for coming,” he said. He was wearing two-thirds of a dark brown tweed suit, with the jacket hung up on a suit rack in the corner. In his waistcoat, white shirt-sleeves, and tie, he looked even more collegiate than usual, and less pompous. _You woke up in my bed this morning_ , Greg thought. He felt his capacity for anger weakening.

“Please sit down,” he said, “I know it’s painful.”

Mycroft looked a little resentful of this knowledge, but he dipped his head in assent. “You as well, I will join you.” He grabbed the cane for the few steps over to the sitting area, where he sat gracefully in the armchair nearest the fireplace. Greg took the other. In the flickering light of the fire, Greg took the opportunity to examine his face. He was still careworn and pale, but he looked considerably less ruined than he had last night, and his eyes were less bloodshot. Greg was forgetting the things he’d come to clarify. Here he was lovingly surveying the man’s expression, and he’d been called here at least in part to be told to piss off. _I’m sorry I inconvenienced you,_ Mycroft would say, _I’m sorry you got the wrong impression, but I’m far too important to be trifling with closeted policemen from east London. We’ve had our fun, now, go back to how it was_.

Mycroft adjusted his position in the chair, and his face was briefly seized by an expression of pain.

“Please,” Greg said, leaving dignity behind, “What happened last night?”

Mycroft’s face seized, became painfully still, as if he was working hard not to reveal the contents of his thoughts. “Yes,” he said hoarsely. “I did—I’m aware that coming to you so suddenly, after weeks of silence, was—abrupt, to say the least.”

“No, wait. We can get to that in a moment. I mean before. You said it was one of the most distressing days of your life. I know I haven’t got any right to ask, and you probably can’t say, but—I don’t know. I’d rather an explanation than an apology.”

Mycroft looked at him for a long moment, his eyes unreadable. He cleared his throat. “You shall have both,” he said slowly. “Would you care for a drink?” He gestured toward a bar cart covered in crystal bottles of liquor.

“Thanks, no, actually, I’d like to be awake for this.” _I need to keep my wits about me when you tell me you won’t kiss me again_. “Can I get something for you?”

“No, thank you.”

“So.”

“So.” Mycroft sighed. “A week ago, I had an unexpected allergic reaction to a new medication, one that produced significant inflammation in my injured leg. In the—scar tissue, and the crucial ligaments. The source of the pain was not discovered immediately, and by that time I was in a good deal of pain that could not immediately be alleviated. I cannot take opioid painkillers, considering the nature of my work, as I’m sure you understand. But they—.” His mouth was thin. “They perhaps would have been warranted.”

Greg had been on opioids after a gunshot wound a few years ago, and he knew that he could not even remember what the pain had been like—it was the kind of pain that you cannot hold in your mind unless you are experiencing it, right this moment. He shuddered. “Go on.”

“I’m afraid—that the pain began to interfere with my work, and my usual demeanor, and I was—very regrettably—short tempered and irritable. Even more than usual.” He attempted a smile that failed miserably. It made something in Greg’s chest hurt. “Ultimately, the chain of events caused me to—badly mishandle a crucial political decision. You understand I cannot go into detail. The relevant point is that people lost their lives because of this decision. I did not foresee it, and I did not directly cause it, but it was the result of my distraction and my hastiness. Believe me, I am under no expectation of you placating me on the subject. I understand my culpability perfectly.”

Greg couldn’t speak. The completeness of Mycroft’s contrition, the extent of his pain and his guilt, were crippling even to witness. The events of the previous evening reshuffled themselves in his memory. He swallowed, a loud sound in this lonely room.

Mycroft brought his hand, with its long elegant fingers, to rub over his mouth and beard. He was looking into the fire; he had not looked Greg directly in the eye since he had arrived. Finally he said, “I was—understandably—upset. I thought that if I could just forget, if I could feel some physical sensation other than pain—. Well. I used you horribly. I forced you to—. You know the rest.”

“Wait.” Greg blinked at him, incredulous. “You’re apologising for _coming over_? You think you forced me?” He huffed an unhappy laugh. “I assure you, Mycroft, I did not do anything last night that I didn’t want to do. If you want to apologize, you should apologize for the months before, when you didn’t—.” He screeched to a halt. He hadn’t meant to show his hand this way, to say, _I missed you, I wanted you there_. “Okay, I guess you can apologize for last night. You only showed up when it was convenient for you.”

Mycroft looked profoundly confused, not a common expression for him. “Yes, I—was it inconvenient? Were there other times it would have been convenient?”

“You _ignored my texts_!”

He grimaced. “Ah. Yes. I did not think—.”

“You ignored me completely, at crime scenes, in every way. I thought you were never going to speak to me again until you turned up last night.”

Mycroft got up abruptly, leaning on the cane, and walked up to the mantlepiece, putting his back to Greg. He stared down into the fire. “I was trying to leave you alone,” he murmured.

“Bollocks. I think it was pretty clear that I didn’t want to be left alone. What did you think, ‘I could use the distraction’ meant?”

Mycroft wheeled on him in a preternaturally graceful motion. “I assumed it meant that you wanted casual sex, and you were consulting your rolodex!” He roared. “You made it very clear that our liaison was an experiment for you, a sexual misadventure, and that you had plenty of other willing men to continue experimenting with!”

The blood drained from Greg’s face. The tips of his fingers were tingling and hot. “Sit down,” he said, with such quiet force that Mycroft did. Greg took a deep, slow breath, and then another one, just to be sure. Then he said, still quietly, “You are the only man I have ever slept with.”

Mycroft paled, his eyes wide. It was clear that this fact fundamentally contradicted his understanding of the situation. “I did not—.” He stopped.

“It was an experiment in that I had never done it before. I was learning, trying things out. Mycroft, I—all sex is an experiment, right? Each new person you’re figuring out what you like, what you want from them. It doesn’t mean it’s a joke, or a game. What I figured out is that—.” He couldn’t go on. He’d been vulnerable enough.

“What did you figure out?” Mycroft’s voice was soft and gentle, as kind as it was fearful. “You might as well say.”

Greg’s closed eyes flew open. “You sound as if I’m going to pronounce your execution. Goddammit, why are you always so convinced that people hate you? That they’re getting ready to throw you away? Mycroft, I just—.” He sighed, tired. “What I figured out is that I liked sex with men. That I’m definitely not straight. But _more specifically_ , that I really wanted to go on having sex _with you_. That touching you—I don’t know, made a daft kind of sense to me. It seemed right. You came over after that wretched week I’d had and I just… forgot about the wretchedness. If it was an experience, those were the results, alright?”

Mycroft shook his head, apparently disbelieving.

“So why do you think I kept texting, like a fool? I wanted that feeling again, I wanted to see you again. And I know it was just a fling for you, and that you don’t have time to dry my tears every time I think I should probably leave my job in the name of justice, or whatever shite. I know it wasn’t like that for you. You made it very clear.”

Mycroft closed his eyes. There was something akin to devastation on his face. They sat and listened to the fire for a long time. Finally he said, “Gregory. Would you bring that bottle of whiskey from the corner of the cart over here? Two glasses.”

Greg did as he was asked. A bit of whiskey was starting to sound like a good idea. He poured them two generous fingers each and left the bottle on the coffee table between them.

Mycroft sipped the liquor and then again. He put the glass down. “I fear I have been operating under a whole host of misapprehensions,” he said at last. “I was—I thought that I—.” His voice dried up. Greg had the vague and unconfirmed suspicion that Mycroft was shaking. “I thought that I was a mere trifle to you, that you texted when you were bored, or—unsatiated—and that you would be happy to continue the experiment with anybody else who was available. I didn’t think it was prudent for me to perpetuate the arrangement under those circumstances.”

Greg frowned. “Why not? If it was casual all around, why _not_ continue it? I didn’t seem so desperate, did I?”

Mycroft looked sharply downward at his hands in his lap, nervously twisting. He said quietly, “You don’t understand. It— _wasn’t casual_ ,not for me. Not under the surface.”

“Mycroft.” Greg didn’t understand.

A desperate unhappy smile seized Mycroft’s face. “Oh, Gregory. Do you think I give the time of day to everyone? Do you think I expunge disciplinary records and create jobs out of thin air for each of my brother’s associates? I can’t—I don’t. For me. You. I can’t express.” He shook his head, giving up.

Greg’s heart was flipping and revolving inside him. He wanted to go to Mycroft, to touch him, but he didn’t yet understand the contours of what was being confessed. It was all too fragile. He gulped at his whiskey. “Try.”

Mycroft pulled his top lip into his mouth, thinking hard. His expression was shrouded in fear. “Can’t you guess?” He whispered at last. “For me—I have always—felt more than I meant to, for you. I have spent so, so many hours trying not to study you, not to notice you. Trying to conceal a deeply inappropriate and uninvited—well. There is no adult word. Trying to conceal myself.”

Greg’s mouth was open. “What?”

“So when you kissed me, I was—confused.” He threw up his hands. “I was confused, and overwhelmed. I wouldn’t let myself believe it. I had to keep my distance in case you could tell, in case you could see—the depth—the _ardor—_ of my. Well. Now you know.”

Every one of Mycroft’s demurrals, refusals, escapes, was remembered to Greg now in a new and bizarre light. “You can’t be serious.”

“Perhaps that is what I should apologise for,” Mycroft said, his voice small and miserable. “For it was that which led me to your door last night, after I had tried to leave you alone. But I was—in the lowest depths, and I thought of touching you, and how it would soothe me. I thought if I could just hear your voice—. It was the most selfish thing I’ve ever done.”

Greg couldn’t bear it anymore. He got up, abandoning his glass, and came to Mycroft’s chair. He knelt on the floor in front of him, between his long legs, careful not to jostle the left. He put his hands on the tops of Mycroft’s thighs, and then on his chest. “You absolute fool,” he breathed. “I can’t believe you.”

Mycroft looked down at him, blinking. Humiliation and love were mingled on his face.

“I can’t believe both of us,” Greg said, and kissed him. After a half second he knew it would not be a brief kiss, and he raised up awkwardly on tiptoes and bent legs to hang over Mycroft in the chair and kiss his mouth. There was the taste of whiskey on his tongue, and the hint of a breath mint, and the bristly texture of his freshly trimmed beard, and the scent of his cologne, and the heat and noise of the fire. And the softness of his mouth, and the fervor of his love. Greg moaned into the kiss.

Finally Mycroft broke it, panting. His face was bright red, glowing in the low light of the fire. “I don’t understand,” he puffed.

“You didn’t think I wanted you,” Greg said, marveling. “I thought you were supposed to be the smart brother.”

“Apparently not.”

“Mycroft. I want you.”

“I—so it _seems_.”

“Mycroft.” Greg pressed his face into Mycroft’s shoulder, the fabric of his shirt wonderfully thin, and laughed, a little hysterically. Mycroft’s hand was hovering somewhere over the back of his neck, afraid to touch him, and this was funny too. “Mycroft. I want to go to dinner with you. I want to hold hands with you, like a bloody adolescent. I’ll come out, I’ll pick some stupid label, I don’t care. I want you. You said I couldn’t ask for another favour but I want this one. Please. Make an exception for me.”

Mycroft closed his eyes. He looked near tears. When he opened them again, he moved his fingertips over Greg’s cheekbone and eyebrow and up into his hair. Then he said, his voice hoarse with emotion, “Every exception I’ve ever made has been for you.”

Greg’s face hurt with smiling all of a sudden. He was stretching his mouth out. “Good. Good. Now, please, please, let me help you get to the sofa.”

“Why, exactly?”

Greg leaned forward and purred into his ear. “ _Because I would like to tip you over onto it._ ”

Mycroft, for the first time in his life, maybe, listened well.


	7. Chapter Seven

There were several fraught moments of negotiation on the couch: Greg insistent upon not hurting Mycroft, Mycroft indifferent to pain if it meant Greg’s hands on him. There simply was not room on the sofa for both of them to lie or perch comfortably, despite passionate effort. Greg, both amused and exasperated, his hair mussed, said, “This isn’t going to work, I’m telling you.”

“Despite persistent motivation,” Mycroft said in a dry voice, contrasting his flush of arousal and exertion.

“I am also motivated to not _hurt you_.”

Mycroft looked at him, bemused. “You are extremely gallant. I assure you that it has already improved a great deal. It’s not dangerous.”

“Mycroft. I’m not going to crush all your ligaments just to kiss you even if it’s _not dangerous._ ’”

“ _Just_ to kiss me?” Mycroft deadpanned.

Greg laughed and kissed his mouth briefly. “I hope you know by now it isn’t any just. But my point stands.”

Mycroft straightened and adjusted his clothes on the sofa. With comical primness, he retrieved his smartphone from his trouser pocket and rang a number.

“What is it?”

Mycroft put up a finger: _wait_. Into the phone, he said, “Hello, Parker, I hoped I could prevail upon you to take me home in the next few minutes. Myself and a guest.” He paused. “Yes, the side door, Diogenes. Thank you.”

“I get to come?” Greg smoothed his hair back, trying to look presentable again.

“You are required to come. Would you fetch for me my—yes, thank you.” With the help of the cane, Mycroft stood quite steadily. His eyes were bright, more animated than Greg had ever seen them. “Well, Detective Inspector,” he said, “I must ask you to continue your experiment this evening, with me.”

Greg grabbed absently at Mycroft’s hip and arse through his well-tailored tweed trousers. Just touch, possessive and non-urgent. Because he was allowed. “I told you. I don’t want to experiment with anyone else.”

This was not now news to Mycroft, but his face still lit up a little. He worked hard to suppress his smile and raised one arched eyebrow instead. “Come along, then,” he said, with very British stiffness.

Greg moved to find his coat and suit jacket for him and helped him into them. Mycroft locked the door to his office, and they went out into the night to meet the waiting car.

There was a privacy screen in the car, but Mycroft did not touch him, hardly looked at him, while they were in it. After a few minutes they were deposited in a very quiet Kensington street lined with white row houses. “Thank you, Parker, I’ll see you at the usual time,” said Mycroft, and managed to emerge from the car with cane and briefcase in hand with enviable ease. Greg followed.

The first thing Mycroft did when he got inside was go around and light the candles that clustered on windowsills and table tops. This was such a strange and ostentatious little gesture that it gave Greg a stab of affection. He found a bottle of prescription painkillers on the bench top in the gleaming, spotless kitchen and took out the required dose, then found a glass to fill with water. When Mycroft had finished lighting the candles, Greg handed him the dosage. “You’re being absurd,” Mycroft said, and took them.

“It can be selfish, if you like. I want you in good nick.”

Mycroft looked at him, as if in wonderment. “You’re a strange man.” Then he was gone, finding a bottle of wine.

“Certainly, but nothing about this is strange.” Greg came over to where Mycroft was pouring the wine and kissed the narrow strip at the back of his neck between his collar and hairline. He stood on tiptoe slightly to reach. Mycroft did not react. In the last hour, Greg had become intensely aware of the degree to which Mycroft was controlling everything he did—that he did not reveal his inner contents. This struck him tenderly and sadly.

Mycroft turned around and handed him a glass; they drank together for a long moment, standing close in the spacious kitchen. There were the smells of burnt matches and posh wine and of Mycroft’s skin. Greg wanted to lie down in the moment and close his eyes. Instead he looked at Mycroft’s face, the delicate early wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and the stubble on his neck, and thought: _I am allowed to want you._ The thought filled his lungs.

“What?” Mycroft read his face.

Greg did not answer. _What’s the best way to say, I think I will love you very soon?_ He slipped his hands around Mycroft’s waist, under his suit jacket, and pressed his lips to Mycroft’s collarbone, separated by a torturous amount of fabric. Into the tweed of the waistcoat he said, “How’s your leg?”

“Tolerable.”

This meant terrible, probably, but also that he did not invite further questioning. Greg sighed, heating the fabric. “No more wine. I’m through with wine.”

Mycroft chuckled softly. “Very well. I should—if you don’t mind—I’d like to take a shower, just quick.”

Greg thought he knew why and the thought made him shiver. “Of course.”

“I’ll show you the bedroom.” Mycroft cleared his throat and shifted his weight. “If you like.”

“Yes, please.”

He followed Mycroft’s uneven gait through the house, so focused on his destination that he could hardly take in the splendor of the rest of the place. They went upstairs and into the bedroom at last, a simply decorated and elegant room, with a king sized bed in the centre. It had two windows that looked onto the private shared garden at the back of the house, and a large ensuite bathroom. “Be at ease,” Mycroft said as he unbuttoned his jacket, which Greg guessed was the posh version of _make yourself comfortable,_ so he did. Mycroft disappeared into the bathroom. There was something vaguely sexy about imagining him in the shower, preparing himself for Greg, suds washing over his skin. He disrobed to his boxers and climbed onto the bed. He felt the best sort of sleepy arousal, relaxation mixing with a greed for pleasure, like waking up from a Sunday nap with an erection and sudden vivid fantasies.

But he was awake again when Mycroft emerged, his hair neatly combed and a white towel slung around his waist. His skin was pink from the hot water and he smelled of perfumed cleanness and warmth. Greg’s arousal spiked immediately. “Wow,” he said elegantly.

Mycroft smiled dimly. He was nervous again, very nervous. His steps to the bed were laboured without the cane, and he winced slightly. He sat on the edge of the bed as soon as he reached it. Greg crawled across it to kiss his shoulder blade. “Is there something I can do for it? Some kind of stretch?”

Mycroft shook his head, sheepish. “It only remains for the inflammation to recede. Even if there were something to be done, I couldn’t put it to you to do it.”

Greg considered. “That makes me think there _is_ something to be done, but you don’t want to ask.”

Mycroft huffed. “Gregory.”

“Mycroft.”

He turned over his shoulder to regard Greg behind him. There were two high spots of color on his cheeks. “The doctor suggested that I might—massage it—to loosen the tense ligaments.”

“Please,” was all Greg said.

Mycroft sighed. “You stretch my boundaries, my expectations, in every possible way.”

Greg put his lips against his neck. “What if I told you it was a turn-on, for me? To touch you, to make you feel better, to pamper you? If it gets at my virility as a man to spoil you a little bit?”

Mycroft made a little sound of both arousal and defeat. “I find you—unbearable. Extremely confusing.”

“Hmm. That’s embarrassing for your reputation as a clever bloke, because it’s very simple. I just want to touch you. Spend time with you. That’s all.”

Mycroft blinked, marvelling. “I don’t know how.”

“Take the towel off.”

“You’ll see—you won’t like it.”

“Shut up, with all respect, shut up.” His hands moved over Mycroft’s humid, shower-warm skin. Mycroft was coaxed out of the towel and made to sit back against the headboard. He was not hard. In fact he was shaking a little. Greg came to rest beside his left leg, and then, before properly looking, turned to find a bottle of lotion in the bedside table, which he applied to his hands. Then he applied himself to Mycroft’s leg. There was an archipelago of scars running down the front of his thigh and knee, tapering off down his shin. The thigh muscle itself was gnarled and lumpy in two places. The kneecap had a bulging quality, as if not quite right. It did made a bit of a stark contrast to his other leg. There was nothing particularly off-putting about it, especially because it was _Mycroft_ , this brave and self-contained person, who had organised his self around helping people, helping the nation. “Don’t let me hurt you,” Greg murmured, and skirted his hands up and down Mycroft’s quadriceps.

Mycroft flinched immediately, stiffening, and Greg yanked his hands away. “Sorry, I—sorry.”

“No—don’t—it felt good. Just. Unusual. I’m not used to such things.”

 _You will be_. Greg eased his hands back down, infinitely slow. He scraped his fingertips lightly over the skin, back and forth, and gradually added pressure. Long slow sweeps, drag and push, fingertips and nails, lotion-slick against warm skin. Mycroft’s eyes slipped closed.

“Does it hurt?” Greg asked after a long time, his voice hoarse from disuse.

“Yes.” His voice was equally hoarse, and equally peaceful. “The right kind of hurt. It’s—pushing tension out.”

For some reason this description made Greg amorphously emotional. “Good.” He made his strokes deeper and more purposeful for a few minutes, and then tapered off, lightly stroking Mycroft’s skin, not only over the front of his thigh but edging off toward the side, toward his hipbone and arse, and then up over his pelvis and stomach, avoiding his cock.

“Gregory.”

“Mmm.” His hands were taking liberties now, moving over his inner thighs and down behind his knees and calves. Mycroft’s legs were daintily covered with ginger hairs that caught the light. The scars were puckered pink and strangely lovely in their own way too.

Through all of this Mycroft was gradually getting hard. It was a transfixing process, to watch his cock swell and grow. There was a flush of arousal blotching across his chest.

Greg slid down on the bed and worked his mouth over Mycroft’s hipbone, then the soft, ticklish place where his thigh met his abdomen. His other hand snaked across, jostling his cock, and scraped and petted at his other hip. Mycroft made an involuntarily little sound of need. Greg smiled against his skin. There was something both sweet and devastatingly sexy about winding him up like this.

Greg looked up and said, “Would it offend you if I told you how—how— _pretty_ —you look to me right now?”

Mycroft flinched, his cock jumping. He squeezed his lips together, willing himself silent.

“ _Oh_ ,” Greg said, his own erection aching against the mattress. His fingers trailed inward, toward Mycroft’s neglected cock. “I _see._ It’s very _very_ pretty to see you try to control yourself like this. You’re such a dainty little thing, I want to make a bit of a mess of you.” His hand closed at last over Mycroft’s cock.

Mycroft made a choked, irrepressible sound and his hips arced off the bed.

Greg sucked a bruise into Mycroft’s inner thigh as he trailed his fingers very lightly over the head and underside of his cock. Mycroft’s eyes were closed, his breathing ragged.

“Are you going to try not to beg?” Greg asked.

Mycroft nodded hard.

Greg bit his lip so he wouldn’t smile at the beauty and strangeness of Mycroft’s vulnerability. Then he shifted his body so he could lap his tongue at the base of his cock.

“Greg—” Mycroft bit out.

Greg looked up, innocent, to see the pinkness of Mycroft’s face and his blown pupils, a strand of hair hanging over his forehead. He was gorgeous. “Ready to beg, pretty?”

Mycroft appeared to steel himself to refuse, but as Greg’s fingers delicately stroked down, down, to his perineum and then his hole, Mycroft let out a desperate breath. “ _Please_ ,” he begged.

“Please what?”

“Just—touch—anything—please.”

“Ah, but that won’t do. These are the rules: you have to tell me what you want.”

“I want you to stop _tormenting me_!” Mycroft burst out.

Greg looked up, an eyebrow raised, the expression of a police detective on his face. “Be. More. Specific.” Then he at last gave Mycroft’s cock one firm, satisfying stroke. Mycroft thrust helplessly into his hands. _Fuck_. Both of them moaned more or less at once.

“Mm?”

“ _Fuck_ , Gregory, I—need you to fuck me.”

Greg smiled broadly, even as a network of nerves short-circuited in his stomach. “Good,” he said.

There was a flurry of adjustments as Mycroft found lube and a condom in his bedside table and these tools were applied. “I can’t claim to be an expert,” Greg said, and jerked as Mycroft rolled the condom down over his cock.

“Work up to two fingers first, that’s all, really,” Mycroft said breathlessly, and slid down a bit on the bed so that he could lie on his back.

“If I hurt your leg—if I hurt you at all—”

“I’ll say,” Mycroft promised hastily, with such enthusiasm that Greg suspected he was being put off. 

Greg knelt between Mycroft’s splayed legs, his own cock hard and prominent. He looked up at Mycroft, soft and vulnerable and open to him. “Gorgeous.”

Mycroft scoffed lightly. “No more talk,” he managed, and Greg, obliging, slid a finger without much ceremony inside him.

He worked him up slowly, reluctant to rush, despite his own urgency. He was learning the task: the textures, the pacing, the sensitive places and and the rhythm of his fingers. Mycroft was tight and tender and slick with lube. Greg had worried about this act before they’d done it the first time, worried he’d be squeamish, that it would be _dirty_ , and now he had come to understand that its minor dirtiness was in fact part of its appeal. Sex, by definition, was rather gross, and this was not a bug, but a feature. To do something so personal, so bodily, with Mycroft, rather took his breath.

“If you don’t—” Mycroft begged, and so Greg with a smile raised up on his knees and lined up his cock, then began to push slowly in.

Mycroft gasped a little, and then seemed to focus on breathing slowly.

“Too much?” Greg asked.

Mycroft shook his head slightly, eyes far away. “It’s good—you—you’re big.”

Greg couldn’t help the swell of pride and arousal he felt. “I won’t move until you’re ready.”

Mycroft waited a moment, breathing carefully, and then he pushed his hips forward. “ _More._ ”

Soon he was fully seated, Mycroft’s legs slung around the sides of his hips, Mycroft’s core swallowing and squeezing his cock. It felt hot and tight, _impossibly_ good. Mycroft surveyed his face and said, “You’ve never done this before.”

“You knew that.”

“But—with _anyone_.”

Greg huffed. “Do you want to trade histories now?”

“Certainly not. Just—your face.”

“You feel— _Christ._ ” And he thrusted. Mycroft’s ability to analyse his face evaporated quickly. Each push brought Mycroft’s buttocks and the back of his thighs into slick, sweaty contact with the front of Greg’s. When he sped up, the touch arrived with a slight _smack_. Greg felt delirious, high.

Mycroft had given up trying not to beg, and given up trying not to make noise. His hands were fisted in the bedsheets. “Please,” he gasped after a few minutes of fucking, “I need you to touch me.”

Greg had left his cock totally untouched. “Are you ready to come, pretty thing?” He rasped, and felt Mycroft clench even tighter around him. He fisted Mycroft’s cock at last and gave it long, uneven strokes as he tried to thrust at the same time. It was ungainly, imprecise, and even better for it, hard and teasing.

Mycroft couldn’t answer the question. His face was screwed up with pleasure, every muscle tight, and then he moaned louder than Greg had ever heard him, and came hard and hot against Greg’s chest. The pressure of his orgasm was so intense, and the sight of him out of control so beautiful, that Greg went straight after him. The pleasure was overwhelming, taxing. It collapsed his thoughts and sensations into a single _yes._ In the aftermath he sagged against Mycroft’s middle, his arms wobbly as he braced himself. Finally he collected himself enough to sit back, extricate himself from Mycroft, and tie off the condom before taking it to the bathroom to discard it and clean himself up.

When he returned, Mycroft was lying on his side under the blankets, his eyes half-closed. Burgeoning in Greg’s chest was a destructive, powerful tenderness. The only words this tenderness knew were: _oh, this_. _Oh: you._

He wondered again what Mycroft had meant when he’d stopped all those sentences in the middle, when he’d said, _I tried not to study you,_ and _the depth of my—well_.

Greg walked around to the far side of the bed and got in behind Mycroft, spooning him. His skin was cool and tacky with sweat. “Was it good?”

“Gregory,” was all he said, which Greg knew meant, _I refuse to praise you for something you know was better than good_. But he tucked one foot back between Greg’s ankles.

“And your leg?”

“What leg?” Mycroft’s voice was arch and sleepy at the same time.

Greg huffed a laugh into the back of his neck. He felt that he was floating down into the very middle of something, soft and dense and downy and insulated, a dangerous well of softness.

He thought Mycroft was asleep until he said, “Unfortunately I must rise early—.”

“Already set an alarm for six,” he said, and yawned. “Will that do?”

“Mm.”

He meant to say something else, something that would satisfactorily resolve the encounter, that would convey affection and gratitude and intention. But it was too late for _that was great_ and too early for _I love you._ There was only the weight of his arm over Mycroft’s waist, the comforting pressure of his back against Greg’s front. He fell asleep. 

When he awoke, Mycroft was gone, the bed cool. There was a note on his bedside table:

Gregory,

Please do not take my absence as anything other than a surprise trade crisis with central Asia. I fully intended to do otherwise this morning. I hope to see you soon. The front door will lock automatically behind you; please avail yourself of anything in the bathroom and kitchen.

With affection,

MH

Greg understood that this note was tantamount to a declaration of love, stilted as it was, and he smiled even as he regretfully got up alone. They were middle-aged and he did not need poetry to know that something important and overwhelming had begun, would continue. He texted before getting in the shower:

[6:10]

Message to: Mycroft Holmes

Have dinner with me tonight?

The reply came when he was leaving Mycroft’s house—when he was leaving his lover’s house—just before seven, jittery on the coffee from his posh espresso machine. Greg was fairly sure he hadn’t broken it.

[6:54]

Message to: Greg Lestrade

Please don’t doubt my sincerity when I say I wish I could. MH

[7:10]

Message to: Mycroft Holmes

They say cynicism is a sign of a strong intellect.

[7:14]

Message to: Greg Lestrade

They say sexual experimentation in middle age leads to lower rates of cynicism and higher levels of trust. MH

[7:16]

Message to: Mycroft Holmes

Ha! Likely story. You’re lucky I do.

Trust you, I mean.

Daft, probably.

Not taking it back.

Tomorrow night?

[7:38]

Message to: Greg Lestrade

I’ll be free by 8. Name the place.

Meeting prep beginning.

Have a good day, Gregory. MH

As it happened, Greg did.

[9:37]

Message to: Mycroft Holmes

How is your leg?

[10:15]

Message to: Greg Lestrade

Why do you ask? MH

[10:17]

Message to: Mycroft Holmes

Because I fancy you, so I often think about you throughout the day.

And then I wonder if you’re in pain. And hope it’s not too much.

Does that answer your question?

[10:23]

Message to: Greg Lestrade

Yes. MH

[10:33]

Message to: Mycroft Holmes

Mycroft.

[10:35]

Message to: Greg Lestrade

My leg is improving, thank you. Pain reduced and range of motion increased. MH

[10:45]

Message to: Mycroft Holmes

I credit my massage.

They had arranged their dinner date’s details by text, but Mycroft called a few hours before it was due to begin. Greg was on his way out of the office. “Hi,” he said.

“Gregory, I’m afraid I have apologies to make.”

“Oh?”

“The trade negotiations are going a bit pear-shaped. I won’t be able to get away until very late tonight.”

Greg didn’t answer right away. He was testing a theory, whether he could induce Mycroft to more personal or expressive speech by refusing to smooth things over.

It worked. “I did my very best to conclude things, but my leaving early—would constitute a minor disaster,” Mycroft said.

“It’s alright, it’s alright. I’m sorry you have to work such long hours.”

“That’s nothing new.”

“It’s new in that somebody would like to keep you up all night too.” Was it new? Maybe Mycroft had had scads of boyfriends and just never said.

“I’ll survive. As long as—. Greg, I didn’t mean—.”

“It’s alright, I know you don’t have a choice. When could we reschedule? Soon?”

“Tomorrow, I hope, if you don’t have previous obligations.”

 _Seeing you is the only obligation I can focus on right now_. “Tomorrow, same place, same time?”

“That is my sincere hope, yes. I’ve got to get back, Gregory.”

“Good night, Mycroft.”

“Good night.” 


	8. Chapter Eight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You are both good and bad for my ability to relax,” Mycroft admitted.
> 
> “Why?”
> 
> He gazed at his cutlery. “You know why.”

Greg spent the next day waiting for a second cancellation call, but it didn’t come. He did shave twice, take a shower, and try on three shirts, but none of that needed to enter the official record. He waited outside the restaurant for Mycroft, having a cigarette to calm his nerves.

It was absurd to be nervous about having dinner with someone you have been inside of, but his nervous system did not appear to agree. This was different: a date, with a man. A date with Mycroft.

He appeared a moment later, stepping neatly out of a gleaming car. He was holding his umbrella, as of old. He was dressed in a smartly tailored suit of shimmering pale grey with a single low button on the jacket. His hair was slicked back and his shoes were silent on the pavement. He looked like the Mycroft Greg had always known, except that now Greg knew his face and his body intimately. His shoulders were high and rigid with tension, which was the opposite response he prompted in Greg. Who sagged against the stone wall behind him, stamped out his cigarette, and tried hard not to smile.

Mycroft approached him cautiously, not quite looking, until Greg gave up, grinned wide at him and said, “C’mere.”

Mycroft blanched, as if Greg had offered to suck him off right then and there. He did not c’mere.

Greg laughed at him. “I didn’t mean—it’s alright.” When Mycroft was close enough to speak discretely, he added, “I’ll take it you’d like to be low-profile?”

Mycroft plucked at the collar of his shirt, which was already perfectly even. “If you are asking me if I am ‘out,’ the answer is yes, in name.”

“But no undue displays.”

“Regretfully, no.”

Greg caught and held the cuff of his sleeve for half a second. “Hey, it’s okay, right? That’s fine, I’m serious. I wasn’t going to French kiss you here on the street to begin with.”

Mycroft flinched at the very idea. Then he seemed to steel himself. “That’s very amusing, Detective Inspector,” he said. The sound of his voice confirmed something to Greg, something about his own doomed-ness. It was low and arch and authoritative, and it left trails of sensation through Greg’s middle and down into his groin

“That’s Gregory, to you.” He made a calculated risk and squeezed Mycroft’s thumb in his fist for a single moment, then let it go. He saw Mycroft’s reaction to his skin register on his face. “Dinner, alright?”

Mycroft cleared his throat. “Dinner.” He let Greg open the door for him, and they went inside.

Greg had picked the restaurant, a contemporary French-inspired date spot with low candle light and a wall of wine bottles on racks. Mycroft looked suitably impressed. They were seated at a quiet two-top with a votive candle flickering away between them, casting warm whorls of light over Mycroft’s fair face.

“Are you going to help me decipher the menu?” Greg asked.

“I’m sure that won’t be necessary.”

“Mycroft.”

“Mm?”

“Hi.”

Mycroft blinked. “Hello. Had I not greeted you? I apologise.”

“I just—” Greg twisted his mouth. “I’m just trying to help you relax.”

Mycroft managed a thin smile. “I’m quite sure I haven’t relaxed since 1986.”

This got an involuntary bark of laughter out of Greg. “Okay, maybe. But well—.” He smirked instead of finishing. _You seemed pretty close to relaxing when you came around my cock two nights ago._

Mycroft’s expression demonstrated that he understood. “You are both good and bad for my ability to relax,” he admitted.

“Why?”

He gazed at his cutlery. “You know why.”

Greg wanted him to say it, but there was a flattery in his shyness too. They ordered martinis, knowing their shared affinity, and when the waiter had gone, Greg took Mycroft’s menu away from him. “Forget deciphering. I’m going to order for you.”

Mycroft looked alarmed. “Why?”

“Because—because I think it’s good for you to have control taken away.”

His cheeks heated. “Gregory.”

“And also because I don’t think you would order something sufficiently indulgent and delicious for a night such as this.”

“What is this night, if I may ask?” Mycroft managed, his shoulders straightening.

A spike of nerves went through Greg, but he forged ahead. “Our first date, naturally. Our first _real_ date.”

Mycroft didn’t immediately reply.

“Is that alright?”

He looked up suddenly, his face open with honesty. “Ye-yes. I’m sorry, Gregory, I—.”

“Sorry for what?”

He was mumbling into his lap. “I haven’t the manner—haven’t the confidence—for an occasion such as this. I’m afraid I’m bungling it.”

Greg’s heart clenched in his chest. He rubbed the side of his foot against Mycroft’s ankle under the table. “You’re not,” he said. “You’re here, aren’t you? I just want—what did I say? I want to have dinner with _you_ , however you’re feeling.”

Mycroft tried to hide his blush by turning his face away to survey the restaurant. “You are distractingly gallant,” he said, so quietly that Greg had to ask him to repeat it.

“Here, though.” Greg pushed his martini at him as it arrived. “Have a drink, let the week fall off, just—sit with me, alright? Nothing in particular required.”

Mycroft nodded, focused. He sipped his martini, he allowed himself to be induced into a breadstick, and, gradually, he thawed. Greg coaxed him into sharing what he could about the trade negotiations he’d been submerged in for the last 48 hours. He told a story about the friend he’d told Greg about all those nights ago, with whom he’d been at Oxford. He was also a John. They’d once gotten lost together, in Warsaw, and John had ventured into a corner shop and come out with 8 different potato products and a comically labeled brand of clear alcohol.

As he warmed up, Mycroft’s storytelling improved, growing fluid and detailed. His cheeks were bright with gin and the first of the wine they’d ordered and a prawn and avocado starter. “In the end,” he continued, “We never told our tutors where we’d been, but as John forgot to wash the club stickers off his hand—.”

“Mycroft Holmes went to Warsaw nightclubs.”

He raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Many years ago. And I didn’t say what sort of clubs. You might be wildly disappointed.”

Greg couldn’t stop smiling. “I think I’d like to meet this John. He has access to classified information I might appreciate.”

A complex expression played across Mycroft’s face. He looked down at his plate and then, with clarity, across at Greg’s face. “You would love John,” he said. “John would love you. He’d be—yes.”

There was something burning in Greg’s chest. “Glasgow,” he said quietly.

Mycroft smiled. “Glasgow.”

Their mains, a steak for Greg and chicken and rice for Mycroft, arrived, and they ate quietly for a few minutes. Greg’s head did not feel full; he was not anxious or analyzing or anticipating. He merely ate with an acute awareness of Mycroft’s nearness. Then, one thought: _silences with Leanna were not like this._

Finally he broke it, because he could. “I never did tell you the update about my constable.”

Mycroft indicated his interest with raised eyebrows. His table manners were, predictably, impeccable. Greg found himself wishing with a kind of childish greediness that he could see more of his skin.

“Or maybe she contacted you? Constable Hartman.”

“Ah.”

“She took the job that so mysteriously got offered to her.”

“Gregory,” he said, but his eyes were twinkling.

“I got an email from her a couple weeks back. She’s doing really well. There’s a really diverse workforce, and she’s not the only trans person, and everybody has been really kind. Really making a difference.”

Mycroft’s smile was wide and genuine. “It makes me—very, very happy to hear that, I’ll admit. I—.” He stopped, shaking his head.

“Go on. It’s alright.”

Mycroft flashed a look at him. “I—couldn’t stop thinking about her. I called John, actually, and asked him, and he was careful to say how different it all was. He just wanted to ask me about you, after a bit.” He met Greg’s eyes again, fond and teasing as well as sheepish. “I had trouble putting him off.”

There was a rising, almost panicky euphoria in Greg’s body, a joy that felt like fire. “What did he ask you about me?”

Mycroft bit the inside of his cheek. “What you looked like. How long I’d known you. If you’d dated men.”

“Tired and grey, ages, and no, not yet.”

“Those were not precisely the answers I gave, Gregory.”

“No?”

“No. But he did impact the secondary offer I made.”

Greg tilted his head.

“He said, ‘Your inspector sounds conflicted about the whole enterprise.’ Meaning the police, I gathered.”

Greg did not have the bandwidth to enjoy or parse the phrase “your inspector.” He said only, “Ah.”

“And then you said—the other night, at my club, you said that you’d wished—. You’d wanted my presence, my distraction, you said, because you were contemplating ‘leaving your job in the name of justice,’ I believe it was. I was too distracted the rest of the night to ask you more about it.”

“Yes, I suppose you were,” Greg said, grinning, even as he knew he was stalling.

“Gregory.”

“Yes.”

“You force me to ask the most obvious questions sometimes,” Mycroft said, scowling. “What did that mean? Do you honestly mean to leave your job?”

Greg knew now that a Mycroft scowl did not signify displeasure or disinterest. If anything it was the opposite. Mycroft scowling was _engaged_ , was giving you the time of day. Greg sighed. “No. I—no, I don’t mean that. That night I texted you, and you didn’t answer—. I don’t mean to slag you off about it now, I understand why you were trying to stay away. Even though I wished badly you’d been there. I saw—.” Greg looked out across the restaurant but saw only his coworker, his comrade, plowing a fist into a boy’s face and coming away bloody, again and again. The _sounds_ it made. The noise of a body breaking. He was back there watching that happen, trying too late to get in the way of it. He swallowed.

“Gregory,” Mycroft said in his usual way, but then he reached across the table and put his cold fingers over Greg’s hand. The touch shocked him, and then, after the contact warmed Mycroft’s fingers, their pressure there was the most grounding thing in the world. _I am right here in this room, and you are in it with me._

When Greg dragged his gaze back and smiled weakly at Mycroft’s face, the fingers were withdrawn. He cleared his throat. “I saw a sergeant from another division bludgeon a gang member, a teenager, because he had a knife on his belt. Untouched knife. Bludgeoned him half to death. And I just kept thinking—” he shook his head and blinked fiercely. He felt bizarrely close to tears. “I just kept thinking about what you’d said about Jessica, that it wasn’t going to get any easier for her to be a police officer, and I thought: well it hasn’t gotten any easier for me to be one either. I used to feel sure about—being on the right side of things, being certainly one of the good guys, and now I—. I don’t know, Mycroft, I don’t. When you got Jessica that job I felt so _happy_ for her, for getting out of it. What do you think that means?”

Mycroft motioned minutely for the cheque. He took a deep breath and regarded Greg with clear, undisguised affection. “I don’t know. I don’t pretend to have any expertise about moral high ground or ethical imperatives.”

Greg blinked. “But you got her that job. You got her out.”

“I—I did that for you. Surely you understand that by now.”

Greg felt a surge of love inside him even through his distress. “That’s not true, though. You’d already done what I’d asked. You did this—I don’t know. I think you might know more about the right thing than you’d allow yourself to say.”

The cheque arrived and Mycroft silenced him with a single scathing look, paying for it himself. Then he stood, without jostling a thing on the narrow table, and said, “That may be true. What I’d like you—I wonder if you’d be so good as to take me home.”

“Yes,” Greg said, because that was all there was to say.

~~~

The sex that night was affectionate and lighthearted and slow, no condoms or declarations required. When Greg woke up around eight the next morning, Mycroft was sitting up in bed beside him, reading The Guardian on an iPad. He was wearing silk pajamas he certainly had not fallen asleep wearing, and a pair of arty black-framed reading glasses. His hair was mussed on one side and the room was full of the smell of coffee.

Greg pretended he was still asleep because he didn’t know how to process the scale of his contentment. Finally, when it seemed like Mycroft might get out of bed, he rolled over and nuzzled at Mycroft’s thigh and hip under the blanket.

“These are the gestures of a highly respected officer of the law,” said Mycroft, an attitude of withering disdain not sufficient to cover the pleasure in his voice. His hand fell, first tentatively and then with more confidence, over Greg’s head and scratched gentle patterns through his hair.

That was better, then, because Greg could be sufficiently distracted by the joy trying to claw its way through his chest by his erection. “Put your coffee down,” he said into the fabric of Mycroft’s pajamas, and then began to pull them down with his teeth.

They were together until seven that evening, and there was a stroll through the back garden, and sex, and a quiet hour with laptops and phones, and a three o’clock lunch with one drink each, and then it was evening and they both had to prepare for the week. “You’ll text,” Mycroft said as he kissed Greg’s temple.

Greg laughed. “You’ll text too, don’t try to get out of it.”

“I would not.” Mycroft held onto the zipper of Greg’s jacket, just aimlessly held it, as he said, “I’ll try to make a free evening. Otherwise: Friday.”

“Yes.”

“Goodbye, Gregory.”

Greg kissed him and walked quickly down the street toward the Tube so that he wouldn’t stay.

~~~

The first weekend that wasn’t interrupted by murder or international crisis was two weeks later. It was also the first time they’d formally planned to spend the whole weekend together.

Friday night was cooking in Mycroft’s lush kitchen, alternating between Brazilian jazz and classic rock on the stereo, with frequent pauses to kiss and tease as pots boiled over behind them, unheeded. Mycroft opened a bottle of white wine and let himself be coaxed into a whiskey sour, Greg’s cocktail recipe specialty. Then there was sex, growing more experimental and kinkier by the week. Greg would not have known, nor would he have been able to predict, that Mycroft Holmes liked to be humiliated, cock-shamed, held down. Nor would he have known that to tease an important man for his little cock would be dizzyingly sexy to him. There was another, lazier round close to midnight, and again in the morning, and in the intervals, lying in rumpled sheets, talking in low voices and dozing.

After another shared shower and coffee, they sat in the weak sunlight of a surprisingly temperate December morning. “Not to suggest that I am unhappy merely lazing around here with you, shagging until we’re dehydrated,” Greg began.

“Surely not,” said Mycroft, dry as a bone.

“But it might be nice to get out today. A real date.”

Mycroft looked up from his iPad newspaper and over his reading glasses at Greg. “What did you have in mind?”

“Maybe a film? Lunch out? Something that doesn’t tax your leg too much.”

Mycroft frowned, thinking. “You’re kind to worry over it. In fact, my leg is much better. My doctor suggested that I might undertake some light exercise, to encourage blood flow, etc.”

Greg raised an eyebrow, having learnt from the best. “Does what we’ve been doing for the last 12 hours not qualify?”

Mycroft huffed. “Predictable,” he said, with such curt harshness that it became suddenly, abundantly clear how much affection he felt.

“Well then, if my jokes are no good, I’ve got to find a way to entertain you. What do you usually like to do when you’re up for ‘light exercise?’”

Mycroft blinked, realising. “I like to walk the temperate houses at Kew Gardens.”

Greg smiled, conjuring up an image of Mycroft in his tweeds, peering at the label for an exotic plant. “Then that’s just what we’ll do.”

Mycroft turned out to be a member at the Gardens, granting them a bypass of the short tourist line, and he led Greg straight into his favourite bit, the Palm House. He walked quite well with the slight aid of his umbrella, his limp almost indiscernible again. He was dressed comparatively casually for him, still more formal than anyone else there, in light slacks, white shirt, forest green cashmere vest and tweedy jacket with elbow patches.

The thing that nobody tells you about attraction is that it’s more complicated to calibrate than simple beauty. At school, Greg had obediently fallen in love—or thought he had—with the prettiest girl because she was the prettiest. It could be worked out by equation, almost. Not so now. He found Mycroft exceedingly nice to look at, but his attraction was more absorbing, more present than that. As they walked through the conservatories and temperate houses, roaming off to examine a placard or admire a bloom, Greg found himself constantly aware of Mycroft’s body near him. The sound of his footsteps, the whisper-brush of his tweed against Greg’s jacket, the way he paused, gave generously of his expensive and in-demand attention to each rare orchid. The fact that he’d watched him get dressed this morning, soft boxer briefs and trousers over his lovely arse, so recently pink from Greg’s hands. The way he said “Gregory” when he wanted to show Greg a new branch growing sideways out of an established trunk, his reverence for that name as serious as that for the plants. The Gardens were quiet on this unremarkable January Saturday, and when Greg put his hand on Mycroft’s wrist or shoulder blade, Mycroft did not protest or even flinch. When Greg took too long reading a long placard about the pollenating habits of English honeybees, Mycroft crowded up behind him and said in his ear, “I’ll buy you the book instead, come along.” The heat of his body, the sound of his voice raised gooseflesh and sent blood rushing in Greg’s head and in his groin.

They went into the cactus house and rounded one particularly sharp corner, finding themselves in a narrow dead end fringed by euphorbia. “Wait,” said Greg, grabbed him by the lapels, and pulled him down to his mouth for a kiss. Furtive and slapdash and tender in the warm fecundity of the greenhouse.Greg was starting to wonder if he had not understood attraction before, if he had taken it for granted instead of learning it in earnest. This was the genuine article. He felt _wild._ Mycroft’s hands were on his waist, underneath his jacket, and he shook a little as he accepted the kiss, as if he couldn’t quite believe it was real. He didn’t push away, despite the risk that it constituted.

“Greg,” he said finally, meaning both: _stop_ and: _don’t stop._

Greg pulled away, breathing hard. “Isn’t there a café?”

They ordered cappuccinos and croissants and sat outside at an old rickety iron table; it was nearly 15 degrees. They were the only ones out, and they sat drinking strong coffee and listening to the rustling of the gigantic willow beside the café. “Let’s stay here until it gets dark,” Greg said, stretching on his little chair.

“It’s nearly noon.” Mycroft checked his pocket watch. “In January. We have roughly two hours.”

Greg laughed. “Till two, then. Then we go home and order a curry and drink wine and put on a film and I can—”

“I know very well what you can do, Gregory, no need to spell it out here,” Mycroft said primly, and then turned his face away to hide his smile.

“Can I ask you impertinent questions?”

“You may try,” Mycroft said, the faux-reluctance in his voice always already wearing through. Mycroft trying to sound bored, sounding instead affectionate, weak, fond, flustered, was Greg’s favourite sound in the world.

“Alright. Hmm.” The croissant was flaky and sweet and probably stuck all over Greg’s face. “Would you—describe yourself as gay?”

Mycroft smiled. “I thought we were eschewing labels.”

“Well, it’s just a question. Historically, maybe. In the past.”

He thought about it. “I don’t habitually call myself anything, as I don’t tend to describe myself terribly often. But gay would be the accurate word, yes. I have exclusively dated men.”

“Mm.”

“I sense a follow-up question.”

“Have you had lots of boyfriends?”

Mycroft frowned and sipped his coffee. “You will need to tell me if you are my boyfriend, in order for me to answer accurately.”

Greg laughed. “Very smooth.”

Mycroft blushed, as if he hadn’t quite meant it that way. “I was—simply in search of data—I didn’t mean to insinuate—.”

“Oi,” Greg said, and leant forward over the table to touch his hand. “What did I say? I don’t want to experiment with anyone but you. I don’t want to date anybody but you.”

Mycroft blushed harder, looking into his lap. “Er—yes. I think you know—as I said at my club—the same is true—has been, for longer than—well.”

Oh, Greg loved him. Foolish man. “Yeah,” he said, his heart seizing. “Alright. How manyboyfriends have you had, before me?”

He bit his lip. “Counted strictly, two. Both many years ago.”

“I see.” They sat for a minute, tearing off bits of croissant. “You know that’s nothing to be bothered about, right? That nobody cares about that?”

Mycroft shook his head. “Yes, I _understand_ —. But. Pernicious thoughts about experience and lack thereof, lack of romantic prowess. They can linger.”

Greg laughed at him abruptly. “Mycroft. Lack of prow—my man. You know you actually _turned me_ , right? You were so appealing that I truly had to realise I was interested in men for the first time?”

Mycroft’s eyes gleamed with affection and pride, his posture straightening out. “That is—better data,” he murmured. “I have no need to ‘turn’ anyone else. One will do.”

“Yeah, it’d better,” Greg said, and squeezed his hand. “That’d better be plenty.”

They didn’t stay until it got dark, but they stayed until lunch, having sandwiches from the café as the sun dodged clouds across the sky.

“When it comes to history,” Mycroft said with trepidation.

Greg grimaced. “You can ask me whatever you like, of course. But Leanna—.”

“You don’t like to talk about her.”

He shrugged. “It’s fine, really. What would you like to know?”

Mycroft adjusted the wrapper of his sandwich until it was aligned with the edge of the table. “I will admit that I was made—aware of certain developments. Related to your work with Sherlock, etc.”

Greg grinned. “Bullshit.”

Mycroft blushed. “She was—unfaithful to you?”

“I mean, I guess it comes down to how you count it. We gave up and started again so many times. I guess she gave up a little sooner than I did. But it’s not—Leanna isn’t a villain. We weren’t right for each other. She’s a hard sort of practical person, a realist, unsentimental and sarcastic, and I suppose—I’m a bit soppier. A bit more optimistic. And also gay, maybe?”

Mycroft tried to disguise his surprise. Then he said, “You are generous to her.”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. We were together a long time. Good and bad times. She gave me—a really great gift. The greatest thing ever.”

“Your daughter.”

“Mm.”

“Shannon,” he said, trying the word out. For some reason it made Greg laugh.

“Shannon Lestrade, public enemy number one. She’s going to rule the world.” He stood and put out his hand for Mycroft’s rubbish. When he returned, he said, “Is there anything else you want to ask? Go ahead.”

Mycroft rose and came to stand next to him. He plucked a tiny fragment of paper from Greg’s jumper sleeve with infinite care, and said, “Will you take me home?”

~~~

This was how it went for a number of weeks: they immersed themselves in their work, texting irregularly most days, and tried to find a night or even a lunch to have a meal together. Sometimes these were canceled unceremoniously, and apologized for with stilted but appreciated telephone calls. The weekends, with occasional but terrible exceptions, were spent together. In bed, in parks, in the kitchen over the hob, and bizarrely, at the cinema. Mycroft loved the movies. Mycroft had a small black cat named Janet who weaved between his feet when he stood over a brewing kettle. Mycroft came with Greg’s name on his lips and then put his lips around Greg’s cock. They quarreled about politics and the environment and the best cut of chicken for a tikka masala, and Mycroft gradually became less bashful and put his hands on Greg any time he wanted to. At least in private. They went on like this for many weeks, and began to talk about a weekend in Cornwall in June.


	9. Chapter Nine

February 26

[16:37]

Message to: Mycroft Holmes

Do you have a minute to talk? I know you have that dinner later.

Fifteen minutes later, as he was leaving the office, Mycroft called him. Greg had something sticky left on his hands and a burgeoning headache and no food at home. Mycroft’s voice saying, “Hello, Gregory,” grounded him a little, but he felt too frazzled to enjoy it.

“Hi.”

“I only have a few minutes, I’m afraid.”

“That’s alright, I just—.”

“Something is troubling you, please go ahead.”

Greg took a deep breath as he waited on the street corner for the light to change. He was on his way to the police garage. “I just—sorry, I know you’re busy. I had some bad news from Shannon.”

“Is she alright?”

“Yeah, yeah, it’s nothing physical. Honestly I don’t know whether to feel bad for her, or whether to be cross with her. It’s just—kids. Kids, Mycroft.”

“I suppose so.” He didn’t continue, and something about Mycroft standing in his office, holding empty space for Greg on the phone, letting him eat up valuable time just to breathe, made him feel marginally better. 

Greg sighed as he crossed the street and then swiped into the garage where his car was parked. “I might lose signal for a moment,” he said, but he didn’t. “Shannon was planning to apply for this scholarship, to cover part of her tuition in the fall through working in the student center, something like that. We’d told her we could only cover so much, and she had lots of options to cover the rest, loans or a job or a couple different scholarships. She chose this one, and had a good chance of getting it. But then she tells me today that the deadline passed and one of her recommendation letters didn’t come through and she forgot to double-check on it. So her application didn’t go through, and it’s too late to choose another one. And I just—can I be honest with you? I’m pissed off.”

Mycroft didn’t immediately reply, just made a small listening sound.

“Which isn’t fair, because she’s bloody nineteen, and she should be allowed to make mistakes. Lord knows I made enough at that age. Compared to her I was a delinquent. But I—she had this great chance, save all this money, and she boffed it. I didn’t know what to say to her. I’m not sure how to respond at all, frankly.”

“It is—a difficult situation,” Mycroft said, his voice hesitant.

“And obviously it isn’t quite her fault, this recommender didn’t meet the deadline. But Lord knows Leanna is anal enough about that sort of stuff, I’m sure she told her to follow up. I don’t know. I wish I could afford to foot the rest of it myself, but it would be really tight. And I _do_ want her to learn responsibility. But am I just thinking that because my own dad was a tightwad that way? I don’t know. It’s been a long week and it’s only Tuesday.”

Mycroft didn’t speak. There was some clipped, ambiguous background noise on his side of the phone.

“Sorry, I know it’s weird, with Leanna and everything, you don’t ask—”

“Greg, it’s alright,” he interrupted. “I don’t mind, and this is about Shannon anyhow.”

“Yeah, yeah it is. Christ, I’ve got a headache. Damn, if only she’d just gotten the application in, and hadn’t won it. Would that be different? The financial outcome is the same. But I can’t help but feel disappointed. Leanna won’t talk to me and neither will she, and I just feel—superfluous, I guess. I can only parent so long, so far. She’s got to struggle on her own. But god I hate it.”

“I’m sorry, I really am. This is—this is only one of many lessons she’ll learn, yes?” He sounded distracted, like someone was handing him paperwork.

“Yeah, I know—it’s. Yeah. She’ll figure it out.”

“Greg, I’m very sorry, the conference call is beginning.”

“Yeah, it’s fine, I understand, go ahead, go ahead.”

“I can call back, if you’d like—”

Greg was sitting in his car in the dark of the underground car park, scrubbing his face over his eyes. His head was throbbing. “No, it’s alright. Go, go. See you Friday, right?”

“Friday, if not sooner. Get some rest, please.”

“You too, if you can. Bye.”

Greg drove home in the rain and went straight to bed without dinner. _If only I had a boyfriend,_ he thought, _to cook for me and rub my shoulders_. Then he felt bad for disparaging the boyfriend he did have. He went to sleep feeling resentful and guilty in equal measure.

~~~

On Friday, he got a call from Shannon before lunchtime. She was ecstatic. Her professor who hadn’t submitted the recommendation had submitted it, belatedly, and apparently petitioned the committee to consider the application after all, upon her “excellent qualifications as a candidate.” “I think I’ve got a really good chance, dad,” she said into the phone, her voice shrill with excitement. “I’m not going to mess it up this time!”

He congratulated her, encouraged her to consider it a lesson well learnt, and said he was crossing his fingers for the review. He was struck by the arbitrary bureaucracy of the thing, that a simple act of goodwill from the committee had preserved the opportunity to save roughly nine thousand pounds, for him, or for Shannon’s future loans, or, most likely if he was honest, Leanna’s dad. It seemed like such an unwarranted change of heart. Then he thought about who he knew who could often inspire unexpected sea changes in seasoned bureaucracy. By the time he arrived at Mycroft’s house that evening, he was confident in his suspicion and fairly annoyed.

Inside the house, he was confronted with one of his favourite sights of all time: Mycroft Holmes, in waistcoat and shirtsleeves, pouring two glasses of wine. He was in good spirits, evidently, not overtired. There was the smell of onions cooking in butter; Mycroft’s cheeks were pink from the heat of the hob, and he had removed his cufflinks and rolled up his sleeves, revealing his slim freckled forearms. There was light classical music playing in the background. When Greg came in, using his personal code, Mycroft said, “Hello, I thought a roasted chicken dish with vegetables, if you’re amenable.”

Normally this set of sensory delights would have eased the tension from Greg’s muscles and set him grinning wildly. Tonight he was scanning his beloved’s face for the look of a traitor. “Sounds great,” he said roughly.

“Premier Cru,” said Mycroft, and nudged a wine glass toward him. He seemed to be waiting for a hello kiss that did not come. Mycroft rarely initiated affection, so he did nothing.

“Thanks.” Greg swigged his wine.

“Is everything alright?”

“Yeah, it’s fine.” He drew closer to Mycroft, the magnetic pull of attraction still in effect no matter his irritation. Mycroft ran his thumb over Greg’s stubbly cheek, his way of silently saying, _You haven’t shaved, but I’ll allow it._ “Shannon called; the committee decided to honour her application after all. She’s overjoyed.”

“Well that’s wonderful.” Mycroft put his hand on Greg’s hip for a moment and then turned to stir the onions. He still seemed to be waiting patiently for a kiss, a phenomenon Greg would usually find endearing. “I’m sure her application will be very competitive.”

“More competitive than it should, actually.”

“Mm?”

“I have to ask you a question and I want you to answer it honestly,” Greg said at last.

Mycroft did not turn back around, but his posture stiffened visibly. “What’s that?”

“Did you pull some kind of string to get Shannon’s application considered after all?”

He still didn’t turn. “Some kind of string,” he repeated, as if clarifying.

“Mycroft. Did you interfere in this? Tell me now.”

Mycroft brought one hand up to cuff the back of his neck, palpating the tense muscle there. Usually this was Greg’s task at the end of the week, one he loved. Mycroft said to the wall, his voice both arch and tired, “Interference? Does that sound like me?” Finally he turned around, still rubbing at his neck. To Greg’s surprise, there was a slip of a smile on his face.

“You know it bloody well does. You _did_ do it. Christ, Mycroft. What on earth were you thinking?”

Mycroft raised his eyebrows, confused. “I suppose I was thinking that Shannon is _yours_ , and you were upset that she’d lost her chance. There were financial implications that would affect you as well as your ex-wife and your daughter. And since the scholarship hadn’t yet been awarded, that it would be easy and painless to have it considered after all.”

Greg made a wordless sound of frustration.

Mycroft paled, understanding the scale of the problem for the first time. “I don’t understand. I meant it as a nice gesture. I was attempting to alleviate your concern.”

Greg buried his face in his hands. “I didn’t want—I can’t believe this. I didn’t want you to _fix it_ , Mycroft. I didn’t need an all knowing power to intervene. I just wanted to—to—vent. I just wanted to tell my boyfriend the situation I was dealing with. I wasn’t asking for help. Just for you to listen.”

Mycroft’s expression was taut and impassive. “I see,” he said, icy. “And was my listening insufficient?”

Greg gulped more wine, surely an unjust thing to do with the Premier Cru Mycroft had opened, but he didn’t care. “To be honest? Yes. You didn’t say anything, you cut me off after a minute to go to a meeting—.” Mycroft opened his mouth but didn’t speak. “Look, I know you’re busy, I know you give me your attention when you can, but that’s not the main thing. I don’t _want_ your favours, Mycroft. I don’t want you to linger in the shadows pulling strings. I just want you to—I don’t know. Tell me it’s going to be alright. Be involved, emotionally. No secrets, just… support.”

Mycroft turned back for a moment and turned off the hob. “I understand,” he said at last, very remote. “I will respond that you _know_ of my limited experience in these—matters—especially when a previous family is involved.”

“That’s why I didn’t want you to _have_ to get involved!” Greg burst out.

Mycroft’s hands tightened on the spatula and the edge of the benchtop. “Greg,” he said, his voice sharp and teacherly. There was no affection in it. “I find it difficult to know _how_ you’d like me to interface with Shannon because you have made it clear that you do not want her knowing about my existence. You have kept us very separate. I heard your stress and I attempted to rectify it with the methods at my disposal. I had no indication from you that these methods would be undesired by you. You have, you will recall, asked me to manipulate a bureaucratic proceeding on your behalf in the past.”

Greg could feel his face going red. “Oh, of course.” He threw up his hands. “Of course you bring that up. Can you really not understand the difference between those two situations? Jessica was being unfairly targeted. Shannon is a bloody teenager who didn’t meet a deadline!”

Mycroft raised himself to his full height, suddenly the person who could merge international agreements or sow sedition or talk a prime minister onto a ledge. “She is your _daughter,_ ” he said with imperious control. “I thought that spoke for itself.”

“Yeah, my—.” Greg finally found the will to get himself under control before he said something he truly regretted. He pressed his thumb over one closed eyelid and his forefinger over the other. He felt strangely sweaty. “I’m gonna take a walk, alright? I’ll be back.” He walked out of the house without his phone, without his sunglasses, and started to plod down the quiet Kensington street, lined with brown brick and white columns. He felt heat prick behind his eyes and his head swarmed with contradictory thoughts, emotions too. Rage and irritation and fatigue and regret and the old, undeniable passenger: tenderness.

He walked for half an hour, over to the high street and then up to the corner of the Park, and then around down quiet residential streets. He was not so much planning what to say to Mycroft as imagining how he could have said anything differently, how he could convey the badness of this to him. He was thinking, too, of Mycroft’s face as he said, “you’ve made it clear that you don’t want Shannon to know about my existence.” The sentiment as he’d expressed it was both true and untrue, but the hurt on his face had been absolutely genuine.

Finally he circled all the way back and came up the steps to Mycroft’s townhouse. In the kitchen, Mycroft was washing the pan he’d been cooking the onions in. His wine glass was empty. He flinched badly when Greg came in.

“What are you doing?” Greg asked, his voice still rougher than he’d have liked it.

Mycroft turned off the sink with a flick of the wrist. He said crisply, “I assumed you would not now like to eat a roast chicken dish. With me.”

When Greg came further into the light of the kitchen, he could see that Mycroft’s lips were thin and white and that he was shaking, just a little. Greg had rarely seen him so perturbed. “Whoa, hold on,” he said, and circled the island to stand next to him. “What is this about? Did you think we were breaking up?”

Mycroft’s eyes closed and he took a deep, shuddery breath, as if to ground himself. “No?”

“Oi,” Greg said gruffly. “Listen here. No, no. That’s not what’s happening. Do you want that to happen?”

“No, I—can’t say that I do. Though you seemed happy enough to stomp off.”

“It’s a fight, Mycroft, Jesus. A smasher. That’s all. I’m pissed off, so are you. It doesn’t mean—you hear me?”

“Yes.” He gave another long, careful breath. Greg felt he was gaining insight into a depth of fragility that he hadn’t known, or hadn’t acknowledged, that Mycroft had. _He’s never done this; he’s never really done this. He thought I would walk out the door just like that._

“I was just calming down, that’s all. Clearing my head so I didn’t screech—too late, I know.”

Mycroft gave a restrained laugh-sob. “No, no.”

Greg didn’t want to teach; he didn’t want to soothe. He’d come here righteously angry, with the moral high ground and a tension headache, ready to rebuke a wrong. But he looked at Mycroft in the kitchen, the anxiety of their early days reemerging in his posture and his eyes. This man, who kept nuclear codes as pets and had never had anybody come home, let alone come home angry, to him before. He had used his considerable international power to futz with the deadlines of a partial UCL scholarship for the spring term. For Shannon.

Greg sighed and scraped his hands through his hair. He regarded his boyfriend, who was looking down at his hands, his shoulders up around his ears. The skill and softness of his hands, the slim lines of his torso, the intimate low tones of his voice. Christ. Greg felt his anger failing.

He put his hands around Mycroft’s waist. “It’s alright,” he said, and pressed his chin into the fabric of Mycroft’s waistcoat. “I’m sorry. We’ll talk about it, okay? We’ll clear up things. I need you to not intervene in something unless I ask. But I should have said that before. Now we know. Right?”

Mycroft hesitated. “I should have intuited.”

“Well. We can’t intuit everything.”

“Mm.” 

Greg felt his tension slacken gradually under his hands. In his own body too, the week sloughing off, the combativeness thinning. He pressed a kiss to Mycroft’s jaw. “Do you have another onion?”

Mycroft laughed weakly. “Yes, I think so.”

“I can chop it.”

“No, I—” Mycroft grabbed Greg’s wrist. “Wait a moment. You are right, I should not have intervened—I understand now. I think I assume—” He screwed his eyes shut. “That my main contribution to any problem, to any person, is my ability to grant favours. But with you—.”

Greg made a rough, emotional noise. “Precisely,” he said, and hugged him. “I don’t want your favours anymore. Just your presence. Just this.”

Mycroft squeezed at the back of his neck. “I don’t know how,” he whispered.

Greg’s fingers dug a little into Mycroft’s sides. “Yes you do,” he said. “You’re doing it now.” They stood there for a moment, just swaying, and then broke apart, dispelling the tautness of the moment by working on dinner. There was something unfinished and unpleasant between them, made only more fraught by the tenderness that lived there too. How Greg hated being hurt by him; how he hated hurting him. He tried to sink into the evening for what it was, refilling their wine glasses and teasing Mycroft by changing the music to something a little more to his taste.

When they sat down to eat, Greg asked him, “Do you want to meet Shannon?”

Mycroft glanced up sharply, surprised. “Mm?”

“I didn’t realise that it bothered you—I should have. I didn’t mean to imply that I didn’t want her to know. This is all new to me, you know, divorce and parenting an adult and dating—dating—a different way, it’s all new. But it’s not your fault.”

Mycroft straightened his knife beside his table. “Coming out is no small thing, Greg. I should understand that.”

“Well, thanks. But we’ve already apologized to each other. Do you want to meet Shannon?”

Mycroft didn’t reply, studying his placemat.

“It’s funny to think of you together.” Greg smiled. “Two kinds of formidable people. Ganging up on me, probably. My—my two favourite people.”

Mycroft stroked his beard and then looked up. “I would like that very much,” he said at last.

“That’s sorted, then.”

But you can’t sort an argument like that in a moment; you can only let it ebb. They did, eating together and doing the washing up and reading side by side in the living room and going to bed without sex, tucked warmly together. When they woke up in sunshine it felt easier, and they talked of nothing but the cat and the weather and the garden, light relaxing things, for the rest of the weekend.

~~~

The following Friday was the first real spring day. Greg found Shannon inside their lunch spot, already well tucked into a cup of French onion soup. “Hey, splatter hazard,” he said as he sat down, shrugging out of his jacket.

“Girls got to have soup and girls got to splatter,” she said with relish.

“Stand up for your lunch, that’s what I like to hear. Well. How are you?”

They made chitchat while Greg ordered tea and a sandwich. “Did you ever circle back to your doubts about your job?” She asked later.

He frowned. “Yes and no. Still thinking about it. Will you think me lacking in integrity if I tell you I haven’t done anything about it yet?”

She laughed. “No, not really. You’re an old man, you’re very set in your ways. It takes a lot to change.”

“Hilarious. She’s a comedian!”

She stared, bemused at him. She was at an age where she could not be perturbed or impressed by anything he said. Well, he’d be testing that today.

“Look, actually there was something I wanted to talk to you about.”

She raised her eyebrows with the weary skepticism of a child of divorce.

“I don’t know how much mum has said to you—either about me or her own, er, romantic life, but well, we’ve been apart for a while, and it seems that there’s somebody new, who’s—important to me.”

She slurped her soup. “Yes, dad, I understand divorce. You have a girlfriend? What’s her name?”

He looked down at the table, conjuring not necessarily his bravery but a more fluent, confident, soothing father than he felt himself to be. “Well, it’s a bit more complicated than that. I have—well, it’s a boyfriend.”

Shannon’s characteristic expression of surprise—a wide, bewildered, wondering smile—made his heart twist with affection. “ _What?_ ”

“Yeah, it was a surprise to me too.”

“Are you—does _mum_ know about this?”

He huffed. “She does. I figured you might want to be able to talk to her about it, so I shot her a text.”

“Oh my god.” Shannon sat back emphatically in her chair, as if bowled over by this news.

He winced. “What does that mean?”

“No, shit, dad, Jesus. It’s—great, I think. I’m glad you told me. Is this—you didn’t know? Are you bi?”

He found himself blushing, and looked out the window. “I honestly don’t know, mate. This feels—he’s really special. I don’t think I’ve ever felt this way before. I don’t know what that means about labels.”

“Wow.”

“Not that I mean I didn’t love your mum—.”

Shannon flapped a hand at this possibility. “I know, that’s not the point. Oh my god, dad, who _is he_?”

Greg grinned, his chest bursting with love as well as with the bizarre comedy of the thing. “Ah,” he said. “That’s where it gets interesting.”

~~~

Six days later, they had dinner with Mycroft in Bloomsbury, at a curry house of Shannon’s choice. She was coming straight from a late class, so Greg met Mycroft for a drink beforehand, relishing this extra hour of his workweek time.

He was dressed in a suit of warm, deep brown, with a burgundy tie, and carrying a new umbrella. When their waiter took their drinks order, Greg said immediately, “He’ll have a martini, dry, gin, please. Lager for me.”

“Gregory,” he chided. “Are you going to carry me in to meet your daughter?”

“Let’s just hope I don’t have to carry you out,” Greg said, smiling.

Mycroft paled, fidgeting in his seat. “Add that to my list of worries.”

Greg tilted his head and then covered Mycroft’s hand for a moment on the table. “Let’s hear that list.”

Mycroft looked up at him and managed a smile. “I do poorly with young people.”

“You’re literally an international diplomat.”

“She’s predisposed to hate me, I’m dating her father.”

“She’s a modern child of divorce. And Leanna’s had a boyfriend for a year.”

“I’m stiff and unfriendly.”

“I happen to like those things about you, after a glass of wine,” Greg said with faux innocence, teasing Mycroft’s ankle with the toe of his boot under the table.

“ _Greg_.”

Greg gave a happy sigh-laugh. “The long and the short of it, anyway, is that she’s _mine_ , she’s half me, and I think you’re rather splendid. Put some trust in her. In the old Lestrade DNA.”

Mycroft sipped his martini gratefully as it arrived. “It’s not _her_ I don’t trust,” he mumbled.

“Don’t say that. You’ll make me cry.” Greg twisted his mouth, trying to conceal a cheeky grin.

Mycroft scowled, glancing over at him, and finally seemed to relax for a bit. “Nothing to do but try.”

“You were less morose before that economic downturn summit in Greece.”

“None of those tossers,” Mycroft remarked, “were nineteen.”

Greg paid for their drinks shortly after, and they walked the few blocks to the restaurant. “Hey, one thing,” Greg said, interlacing their arms for a moment. Mycroft had become gradually more comfortable with mild displays of affection, and Greg had too. “When we’re there, I don’t want you to feel that you can’t—touch me, or talk about times we’ve had. She knows we’re in a relationship. I would never introduce you as my ‘friend,’ or some rot like that.”

For some reason Mycroft stopped short on the pavement, dragging Greg to a halt too. His eyes glowed for a moment with fast unshed tears. He opened his mouth and closed it again.

“Oi, hey,” Greg said, putting his hand on the small of Mycroft’s back. “What did—”

Mycroft shook his head, cleared his throat. “Nothing, it’s nothing. I think—well. You know how I feel. About you. Thank you.”

The street was quiet, no tourists or commuters to be seen, so Greg drew close to him and kissed him on the cheek, his own stubble grazing Mycroft’s beard. “Alright,” he said, and led him toward the restaurant.

Shannon was already at a pink tableclothed-table, sitting beside an absolutely gigantic young blond man. They both stood up politely as Greg and Mycroft approached.

“Er, hi, Shannon, this is Mycroft.”

Mycroft, both severe and diplomatic beside him, befitting his reputation, said, “I’m honoured to meet you, Shannon.”

Shannon half snorted, flattered and amused. “Crikey,” she said mildly. “Never honoured anybody before. I’m honoured to meet you too. Mycroft, right? What do I call you?” _The person who rigged the scholarship application you messed up_ , Greg thought, but he’d already resolved to stay far away from the whole situation. Mycroft had learned a lesson about interfering; they were all learning about each other by meeting.

“Mycroft is excellent,” Mycroft replied and, with self-consciousness, put his hand on Greg’s back for a half moment, guiding him to a chair. It left a glow of warmth on Greg’s body. He felt overwhelmed with fondness.

“And who is this fella?” Greg asked. They were all becoming over-slangy in an attempt to seem nonchalant.

Shannon smirked. “You wanted to bring your boyfriend to dinner, I thought I’d bring mine. That alright?”

“Er—of course, you didn’t tell—of course it’s alright. Hello.”

“This is Hans.”

“Hans!” Said Mycroft and Greg simultaneously, the very picture of polite enthusiasm.

“It’s nice to meet you, Det—Inspect—Detective Lestrade,” lumbered Hans. He had a deep sonic boom voice and slight continental accent. Greg actually _itched_ to share a glance with Mycroft.

“Mr. Lestrade is fine, Hans,” he said, looking coyly at Shannon.

She said obligingly, “Dad,” and he grinned.

“Greg is fine, I’m only joking. What do you do, Hans?”

Hans, who was 19 if he was a day, blinked, uncomprehending. “I go to uni,” he said. “With Shannon.”

“We met in French,” Shannon said, as if this explained everything.

“I see,” said Greg, who did not see. “How long have the two of you been seeing each other?”

“Oh, ages,” Shannon confirmed, and seemed content to leave it at that. “Mycroft, you work for the government? Are you a spy?”

Mycroft looked up, as if he’d been summoned. “Oh,” he said. “Well. Define spy.”

Shannon burst out laughing. “That means yes.”

Hans visibly worked up to a point of conversation. “Are you wearing a disguise?” It was impossible to ascertain whether or not he was joking.

Mycroft shifted in his chair. “Er. No. I look like this all the time.”

“I think you look nice,” said Shannon, as if her opinion had been solicited.

“Not much like a spy,” Hans commented with dejection.

“He’s _not a spy,_ Jesus,” said Greg. “He works for the government. In an administrative capacity.”

Shannon smiled. “Potato, potahto. So. You fancy my father.”

Mycroft blushed, but not as debilitatingly as he could have. “Indeed,” was all he said.

Shannon laughed, as if he’d told a joke, and wrapped her arm around Hans’ giant shoulders. Then her face grew serious. “Well,” she said with evident sincerity, “I think that’s fantastic.”

~~~

When Greg and Mycroft were safely installed in Mycroft’s chauffeured car outside the restaurant, they took one look at each other and burst into laughter. “That was—” Mycroft gasped between laughs “—not what I expected.”

“What the _hell_ was that? Who the _hell_ is Hans?”

“Oh Gregory. Don’t tell me you’re going to become a protective father cliche.”

“My dear. That wasn’t a lead up to anything. It’s a genuine question. _Who the hell is Hans_?” They both laughed again for a long time.

Mycroft ran his hand up and down Greg’s thigh. “It cannot be denied, she’s nineteen years old. Do you think we’ve seen the last of Hans?”

Greg sighed, tired from laughing. “I genuinely don’t know if I want that. I get a kick out of the lad, if I’m honest.”

“Shannon can do better.”

“Oh, of course.” He looked askance at Mycroft. “You really liked her.”

Mycroft smiled into his lap, shy. “She looks so much like you,” he said at last. “Your laugh, your sense of humour. I find it—endearing.”

Greg’s heart squeezed inside him. “You like me,” he said, as if realising it for the first time.

Mycroft smiled. “I do.”

“That seems inadvisable.”

“No one gave me advice.”

“Hmm.” Greg felt suddenly tired from the stresses of the evening. He leaned his cheek on Mycroft’s shoulder. He felt the graze of his beard against his own forehead. “I assume Hans will wear off. But you liked her?”

“She’s lovely, Gregory, I’m in earnest.”

A text came through from Shannon just then.

[21:18]

Message to: Dad

Mycroft is cute and obsessed with you. Promise he’s not a spy?

[21:20]

Message to: Shannon

Obsessed with me?? And I promise, christ, why does everyone think he’s a spy?

[21:21]

Message to: Dad

He looks at you a lot. He thinks you’re fit. Dreamy. I guess no spy would be so obvious.

Thanks for dinner, dad. See you next week.

It felt like his life was changing permanently, radically, right on the edges of his vision. Everything evolving and about to come into view. He felt old and unprepared and very loving and full of grief.

“What is it?” Mycroft said into his hair. His voice had the peculiar quality of late night voices in the car, quiet and far away.

Greg pinched the fabric of Mycroft’s suit jacket with his teeth, bit down hard. Mycroft did not respond to this. He thought about that floating feeling, the sense of drifting through a moment without controlling it, and how it had made him kiss a bloke and how that bloke had been Sherlock Holmes’ uptight brother. All of this, from his present remove, seemed bafflingly silly and also important.

“Gregory.”

“I love you,” Greg said into the posh, scratchy wool of his lapel. He was fairly sure it was still audible. He meant _: I love you. I love Shannon. I fear the future. In this minute I am very happy. In this year I have been very sad._

Mycroft’s breath caught for a moment. His hand, warmer than usual, rubbed at the back of Greg’s neck. He kissed the crown of his head. “You know perfectly well,” he said sternly, and didn’t finish for a long time. Then, finally, “You know perfectly well how I feel about you.”

When the car made to drop Greg off, since it was a weeknight, he straightened blearily and said, “Stay.” Mycroft rarely did; he disliked Greg’s mattress and longed for his own shower head.

“Should I stay because you love me?” Mycroft said, his voice as arch as ever.

“Stay because _you_ love _me._

Mycroft smiled and unbuckled his seatbelt. “‘Potato, potahto,’” he said, quoting a formidable daughter, and followed Greg out of the car.


	10. Chapter Ten

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Scotland,” Greg said quietly into his lover’s jumper, because he could not say, I’m 46 and I have to start a new career. I’m 46 and I’m here with you.
> 
> “Beautiful, isn’t it?” Mycroft’s voice was so gentle. He kissed Greg’s earlobe and the place behind it, loving and unembarrassed here on the far corner of this island.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is by far the longest chapter, and my favorite. Thanks so much for sharing this story with me! I have appreciated your comments and kudos so much.

Greg and Mycroft switched their plans from a weekend in Cornwall to a trip to Glasgow, to visit John and his wife, Isabelle. “I never thought the first place Mycroft Holmes would take me would be _suburban Glasgow_ ,” Greg teased. They were lying in bed, Mycroft’s head on his chest, arm thrown over his waist.

“There’s still time for Rome,” Mycroft said, his voice low and rumbly and postcoital. “Sod John.”

Greg laughed. “What would _we_ do in Rome?”

“Eat pizza.”

“You don’t eat pizza.”

“I might, in Rome.”

“Alright, what else?”

“Mm. Would you want to see the Colosseum?”

Greg laughed. “I’ve seen it, thanks very much.”

Mycroft made a small sound of amusement and regret. “Call me the uncultured swine, then.”

“You’ve never been? We backpacked through in uni.”

“My time in Rome has been entirely consumed with meetings and summits.”

“Poor little rich boy. Perhaps we should go to Rome after all.”

“Hmm.”

“No, no. I want to meet John. We might even be privy to the one hour of Glasgow sunshine per year.”

“Glasgow is very temperate in June.” After a quiet moment he added, “John very much wants to meet you.”

This made Greg smile broadly. “Is that right?”

“He wants to meet the man who’s melted the ice.”

Greg pressed a kiss to Mycroft’s hair and skated his fingers across his bare back. “I guess I could say the same.”

They talked about John’s job at the university, about the guest unit over the garage that John and Isabelle usually rented out on AirBnb, and which John insisted they take. He’d be insulted if they stayed in a hotel. It was amusing and endearing to think of Mycroft Holmes using somebody’s guest towels and tiny coffee maker. It told Greg a great deal about how Mycroft loved his friend.

The last thing Mycroft said before he fell asleep was: “When I’m there—there is no other place.”

It was how Greg felt about the bed they were currently in, but he supposed he could consider Glasgow a temporary alternative.

~~~

A few days before the trip was scheduled to begin, and Greg was putting on his vest. He hadn’t seen Mycroft in days; the British Government was buried in work, trying to put out fires so he could take his holiday. At his own work, one of Greg’s investigations had had a break in the case. They’d traced a contract kill back to gang violence in one of London’s roughest neighbourhoods. He found himself, by necessity, collaborating with Organized Crime again. Outside the suspected location, he felt a deep wrongness as he strapped on his vest and his helmet. The weight of the gun at his waist. His colleagues had already drawn theirs, were preparing the battering ram. As they burst into the house, Greg thought with an odd clarity: _This is not problem solving._

Still, inevitably, necessarily, he drew his weapon.

Inside, he confronted a cadre of young men already in the midst of chaos. “Hands up,” he bellowed, alongside other people calling the same thing. One of the men, eyes wild, drew his own weapon. “Hold on, mate,” Greg called, “no one needs to die today, come peacefully.”

But people were already yelling over each other, drowning the sound of safeties clicking off. It was probably worth noting that one of the young murder suspects fired the first shot. There were five of them and twenty cops. The shot flew over the huddle of police’s head by six feet. Instantaneously, Greg’s coworkers began to fire.

The noise was horrific, and the clean lines between the police and the suspects began to erode, and then the noise was in Greg’s shoulder, just outside the edge of his vest, and he was on the ground, and everyone was still screaming.

How nice it would have been to swoon, to lose consciousness and be dragged out politely, wake in confusion in the hospital like a film. But Greg was not mortally wounded and his awareness felt, if anything, heightened. He got up, staggering, and got out of the firing line. No other police had been shot. Within a few minutes it was over—Greg wasn’t entirely sure what had happened to resolve it—and then Sally Donovan was in his face saying, “Sir? Sir?”

They still strapped him to the stretcher in the ambulance, which screamed through quiet streets. A straight-faced EMT was clamping a set of bandages over his arm, her pressure almost as painful as the wound, and another was setting up an IV. Since they were surely about eight minutes from a top hospital, this seemed a little unnecessary. He felt surprisingly lucid. “Am I going to die?” He asked the EMT with grim humour.

This was not, apparently, the kind of grim humour the EMT appreciated. “It’s not likely, sir,” she said with utter seriousness. “It was a grazing impact.”

“Anticlimactic,” Greg concluded, even as a wave of nausea from the pain swept through him.

At the hospital, he waited in a room for a few minutes before being informed that the bullet was not embedded in his muscle, and in fact had slanted through him without hitting bone or organ, which he knew. More than a graze, less than a serious injury. He would wear a sling for a week or so, take antibiotics, and maybe have physical therapy to strengthen the muscle there again. But he could go home tonight.

As soon as his stitches were complete, Sally came into his room, inquired after him, brought him a fizzy water, and told him what he wanted to know. Two of the gang members they’d confronted had been shot; one was dead, one in surgery. It was still unclear which, if any, had been the murderer they were looking for. The raid had destroyed potentially valuable evidence. Greg was caught between wishing he’d called Sherlock and wishing to be far, far away from here.

“Are they giving you morphine?” Sally’s voice sounded genuinely concerned, perhaps because of the look on Greg’s face and not the thick bandages on his shoulder.

“A bit, yeah. Look—can you call someone for me?”

“Of course.” Greg saw with a pang that she was trying to puzzle out who it could possibly be. _She thinks I’ve got nobody._

“My phone’s here somewhere. I need you to call Mycroft Holmes.”

“Mycro—alright.”

The meds were taking effect, and Greg did not overhear her conversation. In fact, he was in and out of consciousness until he heard a familiar voice in the corridor. “I’m perfectly aware of your clearance protocols, I helped to _create_ the parameters of your clearance protocols.”

A nurse came into his room then, and glanced at his charts. “Mr. Lestrade,” she said, her voice calibrated for the wounded and brought low, “Your partner is here, if you’d like to see him. He’s—very worried about you.”

Greg blinked, roused himself with a renewed awareness of the pain in his arm. “Let him in,” he said, his voice hoarse.

Mycroft was admitted, sweeping in without bothering to plant his umbrella on the ground. He was dressed for work and as pale as Greg had ever seen him.

“It’s alright, I’m alright,” Greg said vaguely, wanting to soothe.

“Gregory.” Mycroft came to a shuddery stop at the side of the bed, afraid to touch him. Greg could see that he was indeed very worried. There was a bulging tightness in his throat, as if he was working not to cry. His upper lip was sucked into his mouth, every feature pulled taut.

“Boyfriend,” Greg greeted, whether from morphine or from shock, unclear.

“You’ve been shot,” Mycroft observed, the source of his own obviousness also unknown.

It was suddenly unbearable to see him so upset. Greg sat up clumsily against his propped-up hospital bed and reached across with his good arm for Mycroft’s hand. “No bone,” he said, “no internal injuries.”

Mycroft’s eyes screwed shut. He was shaking. “Thank god,” he whispered.

 _I want no one here but you,_ Greg thought. _I want it to_ always _be you here._ And then: _I don’t want to be here at all. This does not feel brave._

“Mycroft.”

“Yes?” The _darling_ was unspoken.

“Hold my hand.”

Mycroft circled round the bed to hold Greg’s good hand. Then, as if he couldn’t bear it, he crouched beside the mattress and kissed the back of his hand, his fingers, pressed them against his cheek. His composure was shredded. Greg had never seen him so unconcerned with concealing what he felt.

“I’ll be okay. Really not that bad. Nothing to worry about.”

Mycroft made a choked sound of disbelief. His fingers were ice cold on Greg’s. “When they called—.” He couldn’t go on.

Greg’s heart seized inside him. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“No, it’s—I catastrophized. You’re alright.”

“Mycroft? I need one more favour.”

“Anything.”

“Well. It’s not a favour. Just help, the regular kind—.”

“Mm?”

“Please. Take me away from here.”

Mycroft’s answering silence suggested he knew the extent of the leaving that Greg wanted to do.

Half an hour later, they were installed in the back of the Audi, warm and dark and quiet, and then they were in Mycroft’s bed, and Greg slept, and woke with pain, and slept again, through the night and the next morning.

~~~

In the end they were able to arrange to go to Glasgow a few days early. Greg’s pain was no longer so intense that it would be untenable to sit on the train for several hours. It had surprised him that Mycroft wanted to take the train. He’d assumed a first-class flight or charted car. All Mycroft had said by way of explanation was, “Trains are very civilised.”

They certainly were when done Mycroft’s way: a private car with two bunks and a roomy dining table, fast wifi and big windows. He slept in the narrow bunk, cozy with the swaying of the train and the knowledge of Mycroft’s proximity. When he woke they were sliding up the western coast of Scotland through temperate rain. He could clearly imagine Shannon’s remark: “What, are we almost to Hogwarts?”

He got up and found something better than magic: a cup of tea and two white pills on the fold-down table by the bed, and on the other side of the car, Mycroft in neatly rolled shirt-sleeves, tieless and jacketless, working at his laptop. He looked up, glad to see Greg awake. “Alright?” He asked. “John called. He asks if salmon is suitable for dinner.”

Greg groaned. “I love you.”

Mycroft huffed. “Take your medicine.” He turned back to his screen.

There was, of course, a chartered car to pick them up at the station, and take them through the city to its western edge, a suburb where the river began to widen into the Firth of Clyde. John and Isabelle’s house was old, shabby, and large, with beds of bright flowers in front. Mycroft carried Greg’s messenger bag himself while the driver managed the luggage. John threw open the door to greet them. He was a man of Mycroft’s age with the build and colouring of John Watson, perhaps a little slenderer, with stubble on his chin. He wore jeans and a long sleeved T-shirt and said, beaming, “Holmes.”

“Christiansen,” returned Mycroft, years falling away from his face, “This is Gregory.”

“Ah, of course,” said John grandly, and Greg could discern that particular flavour of professor charisma, informal and confident. He had an English accent slightly tinged with his years in Scotland. “But that’s not right! It’s Detective Inspector Lestrade, isn’t it? Have I got it right?” He shook Greg’s hand, ushered them both inside.

Something in Greg’s guts wound tight, to hear his title pronounced here. “Greg, please,” he said, his expression a little pained. “Greg is better.”

“Greg it is. You’ve been injured, I hear, how are you faring?” They were standing in a large sitting room with an upright piano in one corner, two old sofas, a low coffee table covered in books and flower cuttings, evidently abandoned during the making of an arrangement. The rain had stopped and there was buttery yellow sunshine shining in through a big screen door that let onto the garden. It was homey and earthy and scholarly and utterly un-Mycroft Holmes.

“Much better, thanks,” Greg started to answer, but was interrupted by a feminine voice from the next room.

“Is that the boys?” It gave Greg a twinge of pleasure and strangeness to be called that. The owner of the voice came into the room: a woman a little taller than her husband, very pretty, with dark hair in tangled waves down to her waist. She was barefoot and had a dishtowel slung over her shoulder. “Mycroft,” she said, and drew close to kiss his cheek. “You look _very young_. And this is your sweetheart.” Her accent was old-Glasgow, thick and musical.

“Greg,” Greg said, and let himself be kissed too.

“I’m Isa,” she said. “Do you eat fish?”

Mycroft cleared his throat. “I told John he does. His exact words were quite effusive, actually.”

“I thought that stayed between us,” Greg teased, and to his surprise Mycroft did not blush or scold. He seemed relieved that Greg felt well enough to needle him.

“It would take a great deal to shock John and Isa,” he said, “although I had better not give you too free a license.”

John laughed. “And I know all your secrets anyhow. Tell me, Greg, is he _very_ repressed in London?”

Greg shot a look at Mycroft, who was wearing the long-suffering expression that meant he was very happy. “He has a vicar’s decorum,” he said, “Until the martini hits.”

John laughed again, especially at Mycroft’s frown. “That sounds like the young man I once knew. Well, I flatter myself that you both can unwind here. We’re just a couple of old queers ourselves, and that’s what this house is for. A refuge.”

He led them into the sitting area, and then disappeared briefly to set the kettle boiling. Then he sat next to Isa on the smaller sofa, upon which at least two afghans were draped. Mycroft had already sat down opposite them, shucking his shoes, and Greg hesitated for a moment, watching this strange and happy tableau unfold. He came to sit beside Mycroft and, with a stroke of bravery, took off his own shoes and put his feet in Mycroft’s lap. There was evident pleasure in John and Isa’s faces, seeing this.

“Is your shoulder—” Mycroft asked quietly, just for him.

“It’s perfectly fine.” Greg shoved at his thigh a little with one socked heel. Mycroft relaxed.

Isa got up to make the tea. John said, “We’re sad you won’t see Lenny—that’s our daughter—as she’s at camp. Priya is about here somewhere, she’s staying in the basement this year.” He explained to Greg, “A former student, a friend.”

Mycroft put his cool hand over Greg’s ankle, rubbed circles with his thumb over the bone. “John and Isa always have friends to stay.”

John smiled. “It’s the little compound I always wanted. If your leg feels up to it, old man, you ought to take Greg down to the water before the sun sets.”

“My leg is perfectly fine, thank you,” Mycroft said with the faux formality that Greg recognized quite well by now. “I worry only for Greg’s shoulder—he is still quite early in his recovery.”

Isa grew serious too. “That’s right, of course, Mycroft said—we were terribly sorry to hear you were—hurt.”

Greg accepted his tea with quiet thanks. “Just a flesh wound,” he said. “Mycroft is fussing.”

John said with arched eyebrows to his wife, “Did you hear that? Mycroft is fussing.”

Isa was still standing by the coffee table, a sugar bowl in her hand. “I heard, darling,” she said, and tossed her hair back. “In that case, I believe the afternoon calls for something a little stronger.”

~~~

It was June and they were far north, so the sun did not set until after nine. There was dinner in the garden, salmon and rice and vegetables, and cocktails and wine for everyone except Greg, who was on antibiotics and painkillers. Still, the evening had a kind of soporific quality, with citronella candles and a neighbour dog barking and the pleasure, mixed with mild boredom, of hearing anecdotes of Mycroft’s university days. John and Isa insisted upon doing the washing up, and Mycroft and Greg walked down to the shoreline, just a few blocks. The surface of the water was golden with the low sunlight, and the scent was funk and moss and wet stone. Mycroft had made a show of leaving his phone back at the house, and there was keen joy in standing here with him, undistracted, standing somewhere so good to look at that there was no need to speak. Greg felt clean and rubbed raw, safe and small. The waterfront was empty here, and Greg rubbed his cheek against Mycroft’s shoulder, and then kissed him, more a request to be kissed than a kiss itself. Mycroft complied, hands at his waist, the scents and textures of him suddenly overwhelming. Greg felt drowned in love, very vulnerable. He knew Mycroft could sense it. He was scrubbing his fingernails over Greg’s shoulder blades, and one thumb came up to pet the corner of his mouth.

“Scotland,” Greg said quietly into his lover’s jumper, because he could not say, _I’m 46 and I have to start a new career_. _I’m 46 and I’m here with you_.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Mycroft’s voice was so gentle. He kissed Greg’s earlobe and the place behind it, loving and unembarrassed here on the far corner of this island.

“Thank you,” Greg said hoarsely, and did not cry. He bent down to find a flat rock and tried to skip it across the still water with his opposite hand. They stood there for a long time, watching the ripples of the thud.

~~~

The rest of the days did not feel so heavy. It was easy to feel relaxed and open here, so far from London. The guest unit above the garage was small and copiously decorated, and you could see a sliver of Firth from the shower’s window. They closed all the windows just long enough to have sex, too indolent for anything more involved than blowjobs. The sun shone nearly every day, a miracle even in June, and they spent many hours reading and chatting in the Christiansens’ garden. One day Greg, wanting time to think and make a contribution to the household, walked the mile up to the high street to get the ingredients to make dinner. Priya, a funny and opinionated grad student, made a summer berry pie and told him salacious gossip about the ancient Greeks while he made vegetarian tacos and corn salad. On Friday he briefly FaceTimed with Shannon, and Mycroft said hello too. When they ran out of reading material, they raided the bookshelves in John’s office, which was stuffed to the rafters with books, graphic novels and new fiction as well as the classics.

One morning, Mycroft worked remotely for a few hours on the back veranda and John and Greg went for a very long walk to get out of his hair. John told him about Lenny, a thirteen year old force of nature with an obsession for science. “As we always say, that must be all the donor,” he said wryly. “She didn’t get that from us.”

This was a kind of permission, Greg knew, for him to ask whatever he wanted, but having the option made him less nosy. “Mycroft called you for advice, in the fall,” he asked instead.

John smiled. “I suppose I’m the trans consultant in residence. Yes, he did, although of course he doesn’t need me as an ethical compass. He always does the right thing, the generous thing, as long as he can do it quietly.”

This was such an apt and intimate description of Mycroft that it made Greg’s chest hurt.

John gestured to a lefthand turn in the route. “But anyhow, I suspected that he wasn’t really calling to ask for advice about your employee. He already knew he wanted to find her another job, outside the police. I think he was really calling to talk about you.”

Greg felt heat surface on his cheeks. “Really?”

“Oh, Greg, yes.” He smirked, as if they were sharing a secret. “I’m not sure if you—well, I don’t think he’d mind, since things have turned out so well. I don’t know what he’s told you, but Mycroft has—had a certain regard for you, for a very long time.”

“He alludes.”

“I pulled it out of him a few years ago. I could tell by the way he talked about you, your kindness to Sherlock.” _Years?_ “He was rather surprised, and flustered, when you showed up asking for a favour.”

Greg remembered that meeting in Mycroft’s office. He had seemed the farthest thing from flustered. “I had no idea.”

“He’s very good at hiding his feelings.” And then, in a proprietary way: “Except from me.”

“Did he tell you that at the end of that meeting, he told me to never ask him for a favour again?”

John laughed. “I think he did say that. But you know why, of course? He couldn’t stand being around you. He was convinced he was going to give himself away. He was terrified of you finding out how he felt.”

Greg bit his lip, feeling a throb of fondness and regret. Despite his greater knowledge now, it was still bizarre to think of Mycroft as fearful or vulnerable in that way. “He’s so aggravating. It took me _months_ to get him to admit anything like that. I was convinced that he was bored of me, had no use for me. Meanwhile I couldn’t get him out of my head.”

John stopped short on the pavement. “Oh, Greg,” he said, and scuffed his hand up over his hair. “You don’t—I hope you know now. I’ve _never_ —I’ve known the man for twenty-five years, you understand. I’ve never seen him look at _anyone_ how he looks at you. It’s shocking, frankly. He loves you so much. Isa was just remarking on it this morning, wherever you are in a room, his body reorients—he _orbits you_.”

Tears filled Greg’s eyes for a moment and he blinked them away quickly. “Shit,” he said.

John laughed. “I know! I know. I don’t need to tell you to be good to him—.”

“I try. I try awfully hard.”

“I’m sure.”

“Has he told you—I’m not sure if he told you, I’d not been out before. I’d never been with a man. I’ve been afraid sometimes that the stress of that isn’t fair to him. But I think we’re sorting it.”

John was quiet for a moment. “I don’t worry about that. Every new thing is new.” He paused, thoughtful. “He told me he met your daughter.”

“Yes. She’s very keen on him, as it happens.”

“That vouches well for them both, I think.” They walked in silence for several minutes, with occasional pointing out of landmarks. After a long time, John said, “We were both very unhappy at school. I was drowning in my own dysphoria, too much to properly understand what he was going through—. He fell very hard for some arsehole, someone who humiliated him. And Mycroft was so shy, already, so apt to hold everything inside. He couldn’t talk about it. And I just—needed and needed. I was a whirlpool of distress. I wanted to be a boy so badly that I couldn’t understand how you could ever have a problem if you already were one.” He huffed. “Short-sighted to say the least. He was so kind to me. And I got my feet underneath me after a while. I got to transition. I met Isa. Since then all I’ve wanted is to repay his generosity. To see him happy, truly. I’d like to think I’ve been a good friend to him. But it took you, to really accomplish that. Really, Greg. He is happier now that I’ve ever seen him.”

Greg’s throat felt raw and painful. He was too moved to cry. He didn’t speak for a long time, and John didn’t press. They were descending the long hill back to the neighbourhood, the Firth dull and blue-green beyond them. At last Greg managed, “I am too. Happier than I’ve been in a long time.”

John cuffed him on his good shoulder, forceful with emotion. “That’s all, then,” he said. “That’s all there is.”

When they arrived after a five mile walk, sweaty and out of conversation, Mycroft was getting up from his outdoor office, shutting his laptop. Priya was lying on a towel on the grass near him, taking notes in a fat book, and Isa was gardening in a bathing suit. Mycroft rose and stretched luxuriously, revealing an inch of creamy skin between the waist of his linen trousers and loose button-up, a light trail of ginger hair to his navel. He was barefoot and his hair was uncombed. There was a faint splatter of freckles emerging over his nose and cheeks. Greg tried to catch his breath. _Oh, this. Oh: you._

They came into the garden and Mycroft smiled widely, pushed a hand through his hair. “Good walk?” He asked Greg. “You were gone a long time.”

Greg wrapped his arms around his neck and snogged him until neither could breathe.

He could hear John chuckling and Priya say to no one in particular, “Good for Mycroft, honestly.”

When he finally pulled away, Mycroft said, “I shudder to think what he’s told you.”

“If it produced _that_ as its reaction, I don’t think you have much to worry about,” John said from somewhere behind Greg.

“Hi,” said Greg. “I’m back.”

~~~

On their last full day in Scotland, they planned to go into Glasgow with John and Isa. First, however, they could fulfill the routine that had quickly been established over the course of the week. They slept till eight or so, luxuriously late for them both, and started to make coffee in the little coffeemaker before inevitably falling back into bed, greedy and eager. This morning, Mycroft had made the mistake of taking a shower, returning naked and fresh-faced. The sight of him with drops of water running between his shoulder blades, fading marks on his chest from Greg’s mouth, set Greg alight again. Mycroft was beginning to get dressed, but Greg said, “Come here immediately.”

Mycroft straightened, understanding. “Yes sir,” he said, half a smile on his face. He walked to the bed, where Greg was still lying down, and crawled over it. His faux innocence routine was sending heat to pool rapidly between Greg’s legs. Mycroft was getting hard too. “You tempting thing,” Greg murmured, and kissed him roughly, pulling his face down to meet his own. He put a thigh between Mycroft’s legs, putting pressure on his erection, and Mycroft gave a little moan of arousal at his roughness. “Fuck,” Greg said, “you feel so good. So soft and pretty for me, precious thing.”

Mycroft mewled and rutted his face into Greg’s shoulder. “I want to—make you feel good,” he gasped.

“Good boy, that’s very good.” He maneuvered Mycroft so that he laid on his back on the bed, passive and coy, while Greg knelt over him. He petted his cock softly, far too soft to be any use. Mycroft keened into the touch. “Are you going to take my cock? Going to ride me?”

Mycroft gasped. They’d barely done this since being here. “Please,” he said, “I need you inside me.”

Greg was impossibly hard, every brush of Mycroft’s skin against his rigid cock an unbearable temptation. “Be patient,” he scolded, and with great reluctance lunged away to reach for the lube and condoms in the bedside table drawer. But then he simply laid them down beside him, for easy access, and applied his mouth to Mycroft’s chest, biting and teasing. He loved this. Mycroft panted and writhed under him, desperate for more direct contact. If he wriggled too much, Greg would hold him down, by the shoulders or hips, and this only made them both wilder. Finally he kissed his way down to his cock. “Look at your sweet little cock, you tiny thing,” he rasped. “Are you a pretty boy? Not big enough to fuck me, are you? You can only take it, with your tiny prick, you’re only good for being _fucked.”_

Mycroft cried out in arousal, whimpering, “Yes, that’s all I’m good for, yes.”

“Good boy,” Greg murmured, and closed his mouth around his cock. Mycroft groaned in a way that made Greg glad he had closed the windows, lest the sound carry to the house next door. He took a breath to slick his fingers with lube, and then began to tease Mycroft’s cock again while slowly stretching him, finger by finger. He wanted him ready to come apart by the time Greg put the condom on. His own cock was neglected and leaking against the quilt.

He did a complicated flick motion with his tongue against Mycroft’s frenulum, a trick he’d learnt the month before, that made him jerk and shout underneath him. Greg released him to say, “Hold onto the headboard.”

“No,” Mycroft said, petulant. “I need your cock.”

“You’ll get my cock when you can be a good boy and _obey me_ ,” Greg insisted, and swirled two fingers against the most sensitive point inside Mycroft.

In somewhat more his normal voice, Mycroft huffed, “ _Christ_ , Greg, I won’t last.”

Greg laughed into the crease of his hip. “You’d better, naughty boy.” But he withdrew his fingers.

“Please, _please_.”

Greg rolled on the condom, used for ease of cleanup rather than safety, and breached Mycroft slowly. He didn’t need as much time as he had to adjust, since they’d begun doing this regularly, but Greg was still averse to hurting him. Finally he sunk into him all the way, feeling the swallowing heat of Mycroft’s body, the tremble of his muscles. “Say thank you,” he said.

“Th-thank you, I— _oh_ —” Mycroft gasped as Greg pulled out partway and then pushed in again.

“You feel so good for me, pretty boy,” he grunted. “Milk my cock.”

Mycroft peeked one eye open. “Hold me down,” he begged, “please.”

Greg was only too happy to oblige, running one hand up his slender torso to press over his shoulder, pushing him down into the pillows. Thus secured, Greg took the opportunity to thrust harder into him, slamming their hips together. Mycroft’s legs were spread, exposing the pale white interior of his thighs, flushed slightly with arousal and friction, and his dark red cock, not quite resting against his stomach. A shock of hair had fallen over his forehead, and his eyes were either squeezed shut with pleasure or looking with evident adoration at Greg’s face, his chest, his hips that pistoned his cock deep inside. “You look— _gorgeous_ , pretty boy,” Greg gasped, meaning it without a hint of kinky irony. “So so pretty for me.”

Mycroft’s head lolled back against the pillows. “I want you to come inside me,” he begged, “fill me up, please.”

Greg couldn’t take it. “I’m going to come so hard inside you, claim you, make you— _mine_ — _fuck, Mycroft_.” He grabbed Mycroft’s cock, knowing that his mounting arousal was more likely to make him come.

At the pressure on his prick, Mycroft’s hips bucked and he cried out even louder, no longer distinct words but an indistinguishable string of begging.

“Christ, _christ_ , I love you,” Greg said, gasping for air as he pushed himself inside Mycroft again and again, slamming their skin together, and then he went rigid as he came, pumping hot over and over into Mycroft. As he came back to himself, panting, he rubbed Mycroft’s cock furiously as he softened, feeling his muscles clamp, and then Mycroft was coming, striping wet lines over Greg’s face. The moment it was done, Greg pulled out and slumped down next to him, exhausted.

Neither moved for a long moment. Finally Mycroft retrieved a flannel he’d stashed away in the bedside table, and daintily wiped Greg’s face. Greg couldn’t speak; every muscle was spent. His chin was jutting into the side of Mycroft’s arm, but no one complained.

After a moment, Mycroft opened his arm so that Greg could lay his head on his chest. It was a strangely submissive posture after he had just dominated and fucked him so thoroughly, but it felt incredible.

Mycroft scratched his hand over Greg’s hair. He loved Greg’s hair, Greg knew, which he found perplexing and endearing. It was, at least, thick, though he’d gone grey so young.

“Mm,” Mycroft groaned, shagged out and bleary. “How am I supposed to not want to keep you?”

It made Greg very awake at once. He turned in Mycroft’s arms. “Mycroft. You _are_ supposed to keep me. I want you to keep me.” Then, a greater risk: “Forever.”

Something occurred in Mycroft’s expression, embarrassment and confusion and then devastating joy, and then he crushed his arms around Greg, trembling, and said, “Thank you.” Then, a moment later, “Sod it all, Greg, how do you expect me to _walk_ today?”

~~~

The four of them went into Glasgow and played tourist, visiting the art museum and the cathedral. “The city makes me miss Lenny _so_ much,” Isa said, and proceeded to buy her an armful of notebooks and pens in a little stationary shop. They ate extraordinary kebabs for lunch on a street corner, and Greg had the singular pleasure of watching Mycroft Holmes, stripped of his waistcoat, let alone jacket, navigate a pita wrap while juice ran down his pretty freckled forearm almost to the cuff of his rolled-up sleeve.

They went for a walk on the campus of the university where John taught, being shown landmarks and remembered classrooms, until Greg sensed that Mycroft’s leg was tiring. He made eye contact with him, saw fatigue in his face, and said, “Would you all mind stopping for a drink? My shoulder is aching.” Mycroft, making deductions, flushed and looked away while John and Isa agreed.

They drank Pims cups and ate salty nuts on a narrow cobblestone street between old, grimy sandstone buildings, dappled sunlight overhead. Finally, John said, “We’ll leave you now, with the car. You’ve got one more stop today.” He had made them a dinner booking at a hotel restaurant just out of the city, a very old little estate situated on the banks of the Clyde. “Very romantic, based on a hunch,” John said with a puckish expression. He stood behind Mycroft and clapped him on the shoulder.

“John Christiansen, you should not have done this, ” Mycroft said with real sternness.

This sternness had little to no effect. Grinning, John said, “Greg, should I have done this?”

Greg raised his glass to him. “Cheers, old man,” he said, sending the Christiansens laughing and Mycroft scowling. When they were gone, Greg asked him, “Are you really cross about this?”

Mycroft paid the bill and absently fixed Greg’s loose collar as he stood to go. “No. Simply—embarrassed, to have my desires made so apparent.”

Greg smirked at him. “You desire me. I am here. I’m very apparent.”

“Hush,” he said, squeezing Greg’s hand and dropping it again. Mycroft drove, with careful skill, out of the city to the hotel with minimal directions. They were too early for dinner, and stood on a huge outdoor veranda with trees in pots and picnic tables. The noise of the river was low and constant below them, and the opposite bank was dense and verdant with trees.

Greg returned from the bar with a glass of red wine for Mycroft, and a hazy light beer for him, the best thing to drink in the summer outside. He found Mycroft standing against the railing overlooking the river, looking out at it as a light mist descended. He was wearing the jacket he’d left in the car, looser and longer than his usual suit jackets. Greg handed him his wine. “Are you cold?”

Mycroft smiled at his chivalry. “I’m perfectly alright, thank you.”

“It’s gorgeous here. I already want to come back.”

“I came here with John many years ago.” He sipped the wine. “Clearly he remembered.”

“Wanted to give you a more romantic go of it.” Greg grinned.

Mycroft raised one eyebrow and said only, “Mm.”

“He’s a good friend.”

“The best I’ve ever had.” Greg remembered his conversation with John a few days before. Clearly the feeling was mutual.

Greg joined him, leaning against the railing. They listened to the water and watched birds of prey swoop down into the river gorge and fly low over the water before rising again to crest the trees. There was a peace here, between them and in the landscape, so profound that it felt like pain.

Mycroft spoke after a long period of silence. “You’re not going back, are you?”

“To London?”

“To Scotland Yard.”

Greg put his pint down on the wide railing. “Ah. No. No, I don’t think so.”

Mycroft didn’t reply.

“I don’t want to be shot at anymore. But just as much: I don’t want to shoot at anyone anymore.”

“Mm.”

Greg’s throat felt tight. “The young men—the _boys_ —I’ve seen my colleagues kill. Whether they’ve done anything wrong seems beside the point. It’s awful.”

“Yes.”

“You think you can get me a job in the front offices of a Labour MP?”

Mycroft smiled. “I hope you didn’t take that as a criticism of your chosen profession.”

“I didn’t at the time, really. But it _was_ , Mycroft. You knew that if Jessica stayed there, I’d be coming back for more help. That place was hostile to her. I’m so happy she got out. And just because I’m not vulnerable the way she was—doesn’t mean I should go along with it. Any place that’s not safe for her—.”

“Yes, I know what you mean.”

Greg sighed. “You’re glad I’m leaving, then.”

“I would not claim to have any right to decide your profession, Gregory. However glad I may be to not receive any more phone calls from Sergeant Donovan about your hospital room number.”

Greg hugged his arm for a moment, pressed his face into his shoulder. “Well. You can have the right, if you like. You’re my partner. And I’ve already made up my mind.”

“Thank you.”

Greg drank his beer and shivered slightly. “Just got to figure out what to do next. I’m too old to retrain, really. Any job similar enough would have the same problems.”

Mycroft twitched. “Perhaps this is not my place to say, but if—of course you should know that I would be happy to support you, for any period of time, if that became necessary.”

It was such an awkwardly given and heartfelt declaration of support that it made Greg’s heart swell. He stood on tiptoe to kiss him on his bearded cheek. “Thanks. It’s not my intention to need that, I’d like to work. But I’ll admit it takes the panic out of things, a bit.”

Mycroft huffed but did not remove his fingers from their place at Greg’s elbow. He seemed to be struggling to say something. Finally he ventured, “John has been chastising me. He sings your praises, which is only to be expected. He says I should be telling you how I feel every day, making very sure you know.”

Greg laughed, wondering how the world would turn on its axis without John Christiansen. “You always say that, you always say ‘how I feel.’ Vague.”

Mycroft blushed, hot and red and blotchy, despite the cool mist in the air. “Yes. I—. Being forthright is not my strong suit. It’s difficult for me to—. I hope you know, Greg, that I love you now, and I will love you as long as I am living. That is the simple truth of the matter.”

The truth of it did shine in his eyes. He was utterly vulnerable, stripped bare with ardour. _What did John say to you, exactly_? Greg didn’t ask, just wrapped his arms around him, held him tight. They were both a little trembly, their breathing rough. In his ear Greg whispered, “I love you so much. It’s always going to be you. Please, believe me.”

When he pulled back, he could see that Mycroft was allowing himself to believe it, perhaps for the first time. His eyes were brimming with tears. “You do,” he said hoarsely.

“Of _course_ I do. What did John say to you? Jesus!”

Mycroft cleared his throat, trying for a smile. “He was right. I have been—a coward.”

“Not anymore.”

Mycroft pushed his wine glass aside and reached into his jacket for a cigarette, as if desperate for something to do with his hands. It was the peculiar smell of expensive and exotic tobacco that had perfumed some of their earliest intimate conversations. Greg found it to be a a strangely erotic exercise to watch Mycroft smoke. There was the masculinity of the scent and the gestures, the authority with which he lit and puffed it, but then there was the way it drew attention to his delicate, deft fingers and the purse of his lips. The knowledge of how it would taste to kiss him when they were alone.

When the cigarette was half gone, Mycroft said, “The last several months with you have been revelatory in so many ways. I—.” He turned to look at Greg more decisively. “I did not know life could be like this. The joy—comfort—, and the intimacy of it, have been destabilising, in all the best ways. I would not like to be without it again, without you again. I do not know if this is too early to say, but I am resolving to be forthright, this evening, it seems.” His smile was dim, full of fear, still beautiful.

Greg made a dismissive sound in his throat, also grinning. “It’s not too early. I’m glad you did. I’m going to send John a Christmas ham, I think, actually.” He laughed at Mycroft’s sheepish expression. “Look, I don’t know how I feel about marriage again, and maybe that’s a conversation for another day, but from my perspective, you and I are—it. We’re together, we’re going to be together. We should live together, at some point. The details aren’t important to me, but you are. Just stop worrying in silence that you’re secretly too invested. I’m pretty fucking invested, okay?”

To his surprise, Mycroft laughed, tension pouring off him. He slung his arm around Greg’s waist as they both faced the water. A fallen log was slowly making its way down the river. “The record will reflect that you are ‘fucking invested,’ Gregory.”

They could hear the waitress calling, “Table for Christiansen? Christiansen party of two?” Neither moved.

Greg put his hand around Mycroft’s wrist—smooth skin, narrow bone. “Just—don’t worry. You are who I want.”

Mycroft’s cheeks were pink. “You are who I want to eat Scottish lamb and veg with,” he said. “Now come along, Det—Mr. Lestrade.”

“That’s Gregory to you.”

“That’s Gregory for me,” Mycroft said, and dragged him by the hand toward the restaurant door, away from the river where the mist was continuing to come down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's it! Come say hi at thegables.tumblr.com. I've been thinking about doing some extra scenes or an epilogue for this story, so let me know if you'd be interested in that! Thanks again for reading. <3


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